Not to Despair
by Max Alleyne
Summary: Don't give in to despair," Pepper told herself. It was a recently acquired mantra, and she didn't realize how much she would come to rely on it in the days ahead, and neither did Tony.
1. Signing Off

Pepper Potts looked over the various stacks of papers on her desk, trying to remember where she had put the ones she was looking for. Of course, nothing was where it was supposed to be anymore because Tony had been poking around for something, which, of course, meant that everything was a mess. What he could have possibly been looking for was beyond her.

"Jarvis, what was Tony doing at my desk?"

"I believe he was looking for the latest shipping orders that he was supposed to sign, Miss Potts," answered Jarvis in his posh, British accent.

"Oh, you mean the ones I put on the piano for him?"

"I believe those are the correct ones, yes."

"Thank you, Jarvis."

"You're welcome, Miss Potts."

Pepper smiled and finished organizing the mess that Tony had made of her desk. It was probably a very good thing that she kept electronic and hard copies of everything that came through her hands for a good seven years before throwing it away, because no one was better than Tony at losing paperwork. Of course, that was her job: to keep Tony from losing paperwork. And to get him to meetings on time. And to make sure he knew what those meetings were about. And to make sure he ate…She was getting a headache just thinking about it, and yet, smiling at the same time.

_Don't give in to despair, Pepper._ It had recently become her mantra. The press was having a field day claiming the Tony was suffering from post-traumatic-stress disorder, which only meant that they were all the more eager to try to set up interviews. And despite the fact that no matter how many statements they released telling the world that Tony was just as normal as he ever could be, no one would leave well enough alone. It made her despair over her job some days, hence the mantra. Of course, half the time she used it jokingly with Tony, who really did keep her from giving in to despair most days. Especially on days like today, when the press were everywhere, and she needed to get too much done to have time to deal with them. He managed to make her smile, and that was enough.

"Tony, I have some shipping orders I need you to sign before I head out," Pepper called, still halfway lost in thought as she walked her way across the house, heel clicking on the hard floor, to where the papers were resting, untouched, on the new baby grand. She proceeded down to Tony's workshop, to find him sitting at his workstation, tinkering with one of his many inventions. Tony glanced up at her, looking her over from the top of her red head down to the tips of her pointy-toed shoes. She was wearing one of her favorite burgundy suits with grey pinstripes. Tony was looking far less professional in dirty, grease stained jeans and a dark long sleeved shirt, also dirty and stained. Seeing that he was up to his elbows in grease, Pepper grabbed a baby wipe out of a container she had placed at his workstation earlier in the week. He quickly wiped his hands and started looking over the papers she handed him.

"Are those the shipping orders?" He asked.

"Yes, these would be the shipping orders," she responded calmly, and with a small smile.

"I'm never going to get through all of those. It's going to take ages."

"If you didn't put it off and put it off until is built up like this, it wouldn't be a problem. Now stop whining and sign the papers."

"I looked for them on your desk—"he began.

"Trust me, I noticed. They were on the piano—"

"Yeah?"

"Yeah…Oddly enough, right where I told you they would be," she said, smiling.

"You've checked on all the locations?"

"Of course. I've also checked the buyers and their known associates. They're all legitimate. All these are for the United States military. You've stopped any selling private companies or individuals, anyway, so there's less to actually check."

Tony smiled knowingly at her and began signing off on the papers. Pepper was surprised to find that he wasn't complaining from the very get go. He actually managed to hold off until he got halfway through the stack before doing any serious complaining.

"I'm going to get carpal tunnel from this, you know," he told her.

"You're not going to get carpal tunnel."

"Then I won't be able to work on my machines. The whole company will go under, and life as we know it will cease to ex—"

"Tony, that's enough."

"And we'll be out on the streets and I'll have no other option than to put a pistol in my mo—"

"Which would be quite devastating, indeed. The lesson that we learn from this is that we must not give in to despair, Tony," she said in mock seriousness. "If you spent half as much time actually signing these things as you do complaining about them, you'd be finished in no time."

That silenced him until he finally got to the one at the bottom of the pile. A confused look passed over his face as he scanned the paper, and then looked to his assistant to explain it. Pepper took the form, quickly scanned it, and realized what it was she was looking over.

"Those are the papers you that requested I have drawn up. It's power of attorney. It basically gives me the power to make medical decisions for you in the instance that you are unable to make them for yourself. I'm essentially your next of kin," she explained.

"Not this form. According to this form, I'm your next of kin."

"Oh. Well, I figured that as long as you were having these papers drawn up, I might as well, too. I have no one else, so you have power of attorney. I don't think that I'll ever have need of it, considering that you're going to get yourself blown up far before I do, but it never hurts to have it on file."

"Right." Tony quickly signed off on the form and then the one beneath it, which was the form she thought he'd been signing in the first place. He smiled and handed the papers back to her, and she tucked them under her arm before disappearing upstairs to her office, where she made copies and filed everything away. She checked her e-mail one last time before heading back downstairs. Tony noticed her presence immediately, and looked up at her and smiled.

"Back so soon? Couldn't stay away?"

"Hardly. I just wanted to let you know that I'm leaving for the night. I'll be back tomorrow morning by seven. Please don't forget that you have an eight-thirty meeting with the board tomorrow morning, so try not to stay up too late. And make sure you've read those briefs. I haven't wasted—"

"I will, Pepper. I promise. Have I ever let you down?" After a brief moment of considering all the times he had, he reconsidered. "On second thought, don't answer that."

She smiled at him. It was too warm a smile, and they both knew it. It was a smile that revealed more about their relationship than anything else in the world. It was a smile that told him that though they weren't lovers, they were more than friends. Tony took comfort in the smile, and the pins and needles that came with it. They were walking on pins and needles; they just hid it in the form of a dance. But Tony was okay with their dance, because it meant that perhaps she wasn't too far out of his reach.

"Just have them read. Otherwise, you'll bored out of your mind, I'm sure, and completely clueless. And I'll have wasted my time, which I cannot abide. I'll see you in the morning," she said as way of goodbye. She took one final glance back at Tony before opening the door and heading up the stairs. Tony glanced down at his project before dropping it and taking off after her.

"Pepper!"

"Yeah?"

"You could stay here for the night. It would keep you from having to get up so early," Tony suggested, his voice, oddly enough, innocent.

"As fine a plan as that may be, I left some of the paper work for tomorrow back at my apartment. Besides, I don't have any clean clothes here at the moment."

"You know we could always get them dry cleaned and pressed in time," he responded with a smirk that made her stomach quiver.

"Absolutely not," she responded playfully, but still killing the suggestion. But Tony was nothing if not persistent.

"Pepper, it wouldn't be like that—"

"I know," she said, not unkindly, and with a gentle smile. "Anything else you need before I go, Mr. Stark?"

He sighed, accepting defeat. "No, that will be all, Miss Potts."

"Goodnight, Tony."

"G'night, Pepper."

She made it out the front door and down a few steps before realizing that she'd forgotten one thing. She quickly headed back inside for, hopefully, the last time.

"Tony!" She called upon her reentry.

"Yeah?" She followed the sound of his voice into the living room with a quick stop in the kitchen first, where she grabbed a plate of spaghetti out of the oven, where it had been keeping warm.

"Your dinner. Spaghetti. Please, for the love of all things holy, eat it," she said with a tired smile as she sat the plate atop the baby grand. Tony, who was perched on the piano bench, looking over some schematics, took the spaghetti and tore into it as if he hadn't eaten in days. Pepper knew for a fact that it had only been a matter of hours. She knew this because she fed him a sandwich earlier, promptly at five o'clock.

"This is good," Tony commented through a mouthful of spaghetti.

"Yes, it is."

"You could stay and have a plate with me," he said, trying to smoothly slip the dinner invite into conversation. Pepper rolled her eyes and shook her head.

"Goodnight, Tony. I'm really leaving now."

With that, she walked out of the mansion for the last time that evening, got into her car, and pulled up the driveway. Tony, who had followed her, plate of spaghetti and all, to the foyer of the house, stood at a window and watched after her until her taillights were no longer visible at the end of the driveway. He stayed there for a few more minutes, lest she change her mind, before returning to the piano bench, where he read the briefs that she had oh-so-cautiously put together, before falling asleep with his head resting on the piano.


	2. Not Quite Right

The drive home was a normal one for Pepper, if not slightly early. Normally she didn't escape the Stark mansion until closer to one in the morning, unless Tony was out in the suit, and then it was later. He had come home at daybreak several times to find Pepper sleeping on his sofa, and after the third time, she realized that maybe she should have some clothes there, just in case it happened again. Which it did. But there was no need for Tony to know that several of her favorite suits, three pairs of shoes and half a dozen pairs of yoga pants were sitting in what was now deemed "her bedroom." He would have a field day with that. A field day that she wasn't entirely ready to deal with just yet.

She had felt a twinge of guilt in lying to him about her having clothes there, simply because she was one of the only people in the world that he was completely and totally honest with, and she was wary of betraying that trust. She wasn't eager, however, to spend any more time at the Stark mansion than she had to; not because she disliked it, but because she knew that she was starting to like it too much. On those late nights, it got harder and harder to leave, especially knowing that she was going home to an empty apartment. It wasn't that she minded being alone, because she really didn't have a problem with solitude. The problem was that she didn't want to leave Tony's company. She knew that instead of having stony silence that filled her home, she could have light, teasing banter with her boss.

Her boss. That was half of the problem. He was her boss, she was his employee, and office romances, no matter the promise they held, were never a good idea. Of course, she knew that she wasn't guaranteed an actual 'romance,' as exemplified by the several dozen women that she had escorted out the house over the years. But she liked to think that she was special. Okay, she _knew _that she was special, but she still worried about how things would go. She didn't want to be another girl to be in and out of Tony's bedroom in less than eight hours, never to be seen again. She needed to know that if, _if_, anything ever happened, it wouldn't just be a one night stand. It would be something beautiful and wonderful and because they both needed it so much that they couldn't stand being apart a moment longer.

Yet another problem. Another problem was that she needed him, and she knew it. Because waking up in a world without Tony was like waking up in world where the air is as thick as ash and breathing gets more and more painful by the second. She hadn't been lying when she'd told him that he was all she had. While he was the source of much of the aggravation in her life, he was also the source of some of some of her finest moments. She knew that he needed her too, and while that did help cushion the blow somewhat, it also made things worse. Knowing that he needed her as much as she needed him made her only more determined not to get involved with him. But her resolve was weakening everyday, and she knew it.

Which was exactly why she needed to go home and sleep. She needed to sleep to get him off her mind. Of course, practically speaking, tomorrow was going to be a long day, and it was hard enough to keep up with Tony when she wasn't entirely sleep deprived. How he functioned on the little sleep that he got was beyond her. Not that she got much more, but she could at least say that her sleep was uninterrupted and in a comfortable bed, as opposed to that couch he usually fell asleep on.

'That's enough,' she thought to herself. 'You have left work, no more thoughts of Tony. This time is your own.' Pepper continued her drive home, her music playing softly in the background. It was a change from Tony's harder AC/DC or Black Sabbath, which was probably why she liked it. So for the evening it was something less harsh. Journey. Well, it was, anyway, until "Faithfully" started to play and it made her thoughts wander back to a certain dark-haired boss of hers. Then it she changed it to a radio station, so that for the first time in days, she didn't have to be in charge of something.

She pulled up in front of her building, a tall modernist looking thing. It wasn't the prettiest on the outside, but it was functional, and she had been allowed to redecorate her apartment. She had often thought of buying a house or a condo, so that she would at least own the place where she was living. But then she thought of her downstairs neighbors, her doorman and the rest of the staff, who were all so friendly to her, and she knew that she would have a hard time leaving them all.

She quickly gathered her things from her car, and made her way inside. John, the doorman, was an elderly gentleman with laugh lines that ran deep, and rosy cheeks that reminded her a bit of Santa Claus. He saw that she had her hands full, and quickly moved to help her with her stuff. She smiled graciously at him.

"Thanks, John."

"You're welcome, Miss Potts. You should tell that boss of yours to stop working you so hard," he told her,

"It's Pepper. Next time I think about, I will."

"I'm dead serious. I can't be healthy to work like this. And I rarely get to see you anymore. You don't come in until after my shift."

"I'm sorry, John. Things have been really busy—"

"That's what happens when you work for Ironman," Sherri, the security guard, said from behind the front desk. She was a big woman, but with a heart of gold. She loved nothing more than to tell Pepper about her children, whenever Pepper had even a split second. "Your boss is depriving us of the goodness of your company. Tell him we're going to sue."

"I'll tell when I see him bright and early tomorrow morning. It's on my list of things to do, I promise," Pepper answered.

"But then again, if my boss was a young, good-looking man, I don't know that I would ever come home, either—"

"Goodnight, Sherri," Pepper said pointed, but with a smile.

"Goodnight, Ms. Potts. But I'm serious about that lawsuit. You make sure you tell him."

"I will. Goodnight, John," she said as she stepped into the elevator. Those two always managed to make her smile. As much as she tried to hide it, she had a feeling that those two knew exactly how she felt about Tony. They knew her, also. They had been there since she moved in to the building seven years ago. But still, she didn't need anyone thinking that she was more than Tony Stark's personal assistant. Even though she sometimes wished she was.

Pepper pressed the button for the top floor. Generally, the penthouse wouldn't be to her taste, but she had made the proper adjustments. It was cozy enough for her taste, but it still gave her space. The kitchen area was pristine, probably because it was very rarely used. Her living room was cozy, with more furniture than she ever used, considering that she rarely entertained. She did enough entertaining as Tony's PA, and didn't have the time or energy to do so on her own time. There were magazines and newspapers stacked on her glass coffee table ranging from Newsweek to Time to the Wall Street Journal.

After plugging in her Blackberry to charge, she dropped her laptop in the living room and headed to bed, humming quietly to herself. As she stepped into her bedroom and flipped on the lights, something hit her in the head, hard. She fell to her knees, unsure of what was going on. She felt a sharp pain as someone kicked her in the ribs. She cried out and scrambled, trying desperately to get back into the living room, to her Blackberry.

_How did he get in? There's no way he got…how…not important. Help, Pepper. That's what is important. You have to get help. Keep breathing. Don't think of the pain. Phone. Call for help. Make noise. They'll hear all this racket downstairs. Keep breathing. Noise…Run. You can't call for help if you don't get to the phone. Run. Faster, Potts, come on. Keep breathing. Keep breathing…_her own voice echoed in her head, commanding her to keep moving.

Pepper ran towards her living room, making as much noise along the way as she possibly could. She screamed and banged on the walls. As she passed a shelf, she pulled a vase off of it and threw it in the direction of her assailant. It did very little good, and within seconds, she was quickly picked up and hauled back into her bedroom. She struggled all the way, kicking and clawing anything and everything she could. She bit the man's hand that covered her mouth.

"Damnit! Bitch bit me. Hold her down."

"Don't be so rough. You're scaring the poor thing."

"Well stop worrying about her feelings, and hurry the hell up. I know we need her alive, but I damn near lost a finger to that woman, and I don't take kindly to that."

_Two. There must be two of them. Keep breathing. Keep fighting. Someone had to have heard all that noise. Keep fighting, and get back to the elevator. Fight, Pepper. Breathe past the pain. Fight. Ignore the pain, ignore the pain_. _Pain is fleeting. Keep fighting, keep breathing…_

She didn't realize that she had speaking out loud to herself. She wasn't sure when, but it seemed that her inner monologue was being narrated by Tony's voice, as if he were the one encouraging her to fight. It was almost like her was voicing her in inner thoughts, and she was simply speaking along with it.

"There's really no point in fighting, sweetheart," a man's voice, a different voice from the first one. This one had been worried about scaring her. He was trying to be soothing, but Pepper's heart continued to pound just as quickly and loudly in her ears.

"You're outnumbered. And you're such a fragile thing. Stop now and save yourself the pain of an ultimately futile struggle."

There was something wrong about his voice. It was completely and totally sincere, she realized. He was perfectly serious about expecting her to stop fighting. To him, it apparently seemed like the only logical thing to do. Stop fighting, stop the pain. It made sense…

_No, Pepper. You stop fighting, and you're going to be raped, or murdered or worse. Keep fighting._ _ You must not give in to despair._

"Must not give in to despair…" she mumbled.

She couldn't see, but she continued to fight. She could feel one of the men hold her down. She continued kicking, trying to fend them off, when she felt the heel of her shoe sink into something soft. There was a shout of pain, and then wetness on her face. She recognized the smell in an instant. The pressure holding her down was gone. She quickly sprang from the bed and headed back towards the door, trying desperately to get to the elevator.

_Breathe. Run. Don't despair. Help. Call for help, Pepper. Make noise. Lots of noise. Vase…throw vase. Hit walls. Knock over chair. Phone. Get to phone. Breathe. Run. Don't despair. So close, so close. Help. Call Tony. Tony can help. And police. Hasn't anyone heard anything? Keep breathing. Run. Don't despair… _

_Oh God! Pain…leg…ouch…falling…ouch…_

She felt her ankle twist then snap in a way that it was never meant to do as the heel of her shoe snapped. She toppled forward, face first, into her glass coffee table. She felt a sting as the tiny shards of glass cut into her face and neck. More wetness soaking her collar. _Blood_, she realized. _Blood that should be on the inside…flowing through my veins._ She felt herself weakening and tried to push herself up off the floor, but she had no strength. Her body didn't want to cooperate, and she felt nauseous from the blood loss.

She managed to crawl out of the wreckage of her table, out of the puddle of her own blood, before she felt yet another swift kick to the ribs. She cried out in pain and stopped dead on the floor. She lay on her back, looking up at her assailant, trying to keep breathing through the pain. She watched as he pulled a syringe out of one of his coat pockets.

"This will make sure that it doesn't hurt anymore. No need to be afraid. You're just going to take a short nap."

_Move, Pepper. Move. Don't just lie here._

But her body wouldn't move. Her limbs were heavy as lead, and she was completely helpless. He pushed her hair out of her face, and gently cupped her cheek. He was clinical and almost gentle about injecting the drug into her neck, and it didn't sit well with Pepper. If anything, it made her more afraid.

"There. That wasn't so bad, was it?" he asked, as he pulled her head into his lap and stroked her hair. She felt even more nauseous than before, and it had nothing to do with the drugs or her blood loss. A feeling of hopelessness and sadness washed over her.

_Don't give in to despair, Pepper. Don't give in to despair…_

"Don't despair. Don't despair," she mumbled to herself over and over.

"That's exactly right. Don't be sad. We're just going to ask you some questions, and then you can be on your merry way," he assailant whispered in her ear, his voice still low, as if trying to comfort her. It was all wasted, however, because she really couldn't hear much of anything except her inner thoughts.

She tried to keep her eyes open and fight the drugs he had given her, but it was to no avail. She managed to stay awake a few moments more before she fell into oblivion.

* * *

Tony bolted upright, awakened by the sound of Jarvis's voice. It took several moments for him to realize that he was still bent over his piano, and that he wasn't in that dark, grimy cave in Afghanistan. His heart was racing, pounding in his ears. His grease-stained clothes were drenched through with cold sweat, and he shivered. His neck was cramped from falling asleep bend over the piano, and he felt like death warmed over. As he tried to move, he realized that his limbs were heavy as lead, and that there was no way he was going to be able to do anything productive without a long, hot shower and large cup of coffee.

"Sir, it appears that you were experiencing distress in your sleep. It seemed best to wake you."

"Thank you, Jarvis. What time is it?"

"It is 4:43 A.M."

Tony rose and slowly made his way back to the master bedroom. There was no way that he was going to be able to go back to sleep feeling this disgusting, so he headed for the shower, stripping his work clothes off along the way. He started the shower and stepped inside, letting the hot water pour over his body for several minutes before he even moved. It was like he was on auto-pilot, just letting his body go while he let his mind wander.

Nightmares were nothing new to him. When he had first returned from Afghanistan, they were a nightly occurrence when he wasn't on sleeping pills. Only a lot of nagging from Pepper had gotten him to take them in the first place, but they had helped. They let him sleep, and the when took them, the nightmares didn't come, for that night, anyway. He would be slightly groggy the morning after taking them, but at least he would get some sleep.

Recently, the nightmares were fading. They weren't gone completely, but he wasn't waking up every night with them, either. They weren't as vivid as they had first been, either. At first it was like reliving every single minute of his torture over and over again, and he would wake up feeling like his heart was going to beat its way out of his chest and explode. Now, the nightmares were a little less sharp, a little less real. He woke up knowing that he was in Malibu, not in a cave in Afghanistan.

Except for tonight. Everything had been so vivid. He could still smell the mustiness of the cave, feel the coolness of the air. And the pain…the pain had been as sharp and burning and colorful as it had been the first time around. He could swear that his chest had been cracked open just a few moments ago; it was so fresh in his mind. But that had been months ago…now, in place of that car battery and hodgepodge of nuts and bolts, he had the arc reactor. His hand ran over the smooth surface of the arc reactor, as if to remind him that it was there, that he really wasn't going crazy.

And even though he knew he wasn't going crazy, he still felt the grease and the grime on his skin. He grabbed the soap and set to scrubbing. Scrubbing and scrubbing, trying to get the last remnants of his nightmare off of him. It wasn't until ten or so minutes later when he started to feel the sting of hot water on his raw skin. It was enough to shock him out of his stupor and quickly finished his shower.

Before he even stepped out of the shower, he knew he wasn't going to be able to go back to bed. The nightmare was still too fresh in his mind, and the hot shower had done nothing but wake him up even more. Thoughts were racing through his head, trying to puzzle out the mystery of his overly-vivid nightmare, and there was no way that he was going to be able to shut his mind off now.

_You should sleep, Stark, and you know it. Pepper is going to kick your ass if you're half asleep during the board meeting this morning. _

Tony smiled to himself, thinking of his assistant. Assistant probably wasn't really the proper term for her. She was…everything. An assistant, a nurse, a maid [something he tried to change, but he found that too often she was cleaning up after him], but most importantly…he would say that she was a friend, but they both knew that it was more than that. They weren't quiet friends, but they weren't lovers, either. It was complicated. All Tony knew was that she was all that he had, and he needed her. He needed her more than was probably healthy. Hell, she reminded him to eat. And shower. And run his company.

He wasn't entirely sure where he would be without her, because he sure as hell wouldn't be standing in his bathroom pondering her. He would probably be dead and buried in the middle of some rocky desert in Afghanistan. There were some things about that time in his life that he was hazy on, but if he knew anything, he knew that Pepper's voice had guided him through his darkest hours. Between the image that he held of her in his mind and the encouragement from Yinsen, he had managed to survive. He never told Pepper that he had thought of her during his span in captivity. That was one thing that they didn't talk about, mostly because it upset her. It upset her more than it upset him, perhaps because he saw it as a change of heart that he needed. She knew that it changed him for the better, but the idea of him being in pain…well, pained her.

Coffee called to him. Tony knew that he was going to need a lot of it to get through this meeting. Board meetings generally alternated between being boring or headache-inducing. It had taken him too long and too many headaches to convince them that he wasn't suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder, and he really wasn't in the mood to deal with them. Then again, when was he ever in a mood to deal with them? He almost missed the days when he let Pepper deal with them and he just showed up to sign the paperwork. Almost. No matter how nice it would be to stop paying attention to things, he wouldn't risk his company like that again.

The smell of coffee was wonderful, and he breathed deep. Those briefs were still sitting on the piano, practically calling, pleading with him to finish reading them. He had scanned them and gotten the gist of things, but Pepper had definitely said that he needed to read the whole thing, so he poured himself a cup of coffee and started reading the briefs, this time on the comfort of his living room sofa.

They were boring. Very boring. Tony finished them as quickly as he could be retreating to his workshop. Another shower would be in order after all was said and done, but he had quite a few hours, which was plenty of time to make some adjustments to the suit, get some work done on the hot rod, and take another shower.

_This actually seems like the beginning of a productive day. Wow. And without Pepper having to hustle you from one end of the Earth to the other. It's weird._

Time seems to move differently in his workshop. It's like going into an alternate dimension where time seems to pass much faster. The blink of an eye in the workshop was two and half hours. Or at least that's how it seemed.

"Jarvis, what time is it?"

"It is 7:13 AM."

"Has Pepper gotten here yet?" Tony asked, puzzled. Pepper had said she would be here at 7, and he definitely had not heard her come in.

"No, sir, she has not arrived yet."

"Check the traffic report and see if there are any tie-ups that would interfere with her commute."

"Yes, sir."

Even as Jarvis was checking, Tony could feel the panic rising within him. Something wasn't right; he just knew it. He had a nightmare, Pepper was late…something was definitely wrong. His gut was telling him so.

"Sir? It appears that there are no traffic accidents or road construction to speak of."

"Thank you, Jarvis."

Tony grabbed his cell phone and quickly dialed Pepper's number. It went straight to voicemail. If he hadn't been in a full blown panic before, he definitely was now. Pepper never let her phone go straight to voicemail, especially not when he was calling. She might have done it once or twice in the middle of a very important meeting, but he knew she wasn't in a meeting right now…

"Jarvis, I need to file a missing person's report."

"Miss Potts has not been missing long enough for the police to accept a missing persons report, sir."

"I don't care."

"They won't take a—"

"Fine, Jarvis. I want you to keep calling Pepper's phone every two minutes until she answers or I tell you to cease and desist. I'm going to her apartment."

"Will do, sir."

"Oh, and call my office. Apologize to the Board of Directors, and cancel the meeting."

"Miss Potts would say that you are being a bit hasty—"

"Pepper's not here, Jarvis. Just do it."

Tony barely remembered to grab his wallet and keys in his hurry to get out of the house. The Audi roared out of the garage and onto the freeway in record time. As he drove, he dialed Rhodey.

"Hey. Isn't it a bit early for you to be up?" Rhodey teased by way of greeting.

"Pepper didn't show up this morning."

"It's only 7:20, give her a few more minutes."

"Rhodey, she's not answering her phone. Hell, it's going straight to voicemail. She never does that to me. She also said that she would be in by seven, and she's late. She hasn't called and there aren't any traffic backups on her usual route. Now tell me that something isn't wrong with that picture."

Rhodey was silent. He couldn't argue with Tony's logic. It was vey unlike the Pepper that they knew and loved, and it made him very nervous. She wasn't the type to take a personal day without telling someone, especially after telling Tony that she would be coming in today. She was the personal assistant to a very powerful weapons manufacturer, and almost everyone in the free-damn-world knew who she was. Damnit.

"Okay…um…where are you now?" Rhodey asked.

"On the way to her apartment."

"I'll meet you there as soon as I can. I'm on my way." They both hung up quickly. Tony then called Happy.

"Hogan."

"Hogan, it's Tony. Pepper's missing."

"What?"

"Pepper didn't show up for work this morning and she's not answering her phone."

"I'll meet you at her apartment as soon as possible," Happy answered without missing a beat. Tony could hear the engine of Happy's car revving up, even as he hung up the phone.

Tony made it to Pepper's apartment in record time, though it didn't feel like it. Even though he was pushing ninety-five on the freeway, it felt as if he were crawling. He knew that he was just begging to be pulled over, but this morning, that wasn't an option for him. His first priority was to get to Pepper's apartment. He had to find Pepper, because as much as he hoped he was wrong, he knew in his gut that something was wrong.

As he pulled up in front of her apartment building, he noticed that nothing seemed out of place. He looked up at her balcony on the top floor. Her curtains were closed, and nothing seemed out of place from the outside. Then again, Tony knew all too well that looks can be deceiving. He was desperately hoping that this time, they weren't.


	3. Man on a Mission

**Author's Note:** A big thank you to those who read and reviewed. Feedback is always welcome, and it makes me smile. Here is another chapter for [hopefully] your enjoyment.

* * *

Tony Stark was a man on a mission, and not the kind that involved his suit of gold-titanium alloy. He charged through the front doors of Pepper's apartment building and headed straight to the elevator before he was stopped by a short, squat woman that had come from behind the security desk.

"Sir, where are you going?"

"I need to see Pepper Potts. She's in the penthouse. She didn't come in for work this morning, and she isn't answering her phone."

"Are you on the approved guest list?"

"I'm her boss, I'm sure I am."

"What's the name?"

"Seriously? Tony Stark. Do you mind hurrying this along? I don't know if I mentioned that I think something might have happened to her? Because I do."

The woman just looked at him for a minute, her eyes wide with shock, before picking up the phone and asking for two security guards at the front desk.

"Are you serious? She might be—"

"I'm just asking them to escort you, Mr. Stark, in case something has happened to her. It can't hurt. And here are your escorts now, so you're free to head up there." She gestured to the elevator, where two large, uniform-clad men were waiting on him.

"Thank you." His tone was anything but grateful. He was practically growling.

"I sincerely hope that you're wrong about something happening to Pepper. She's the sweetest thing," the woman said, wringing her hands. Tony could see genuine worry in her face, and he understood completely. He sincerely hoped that this woman had no reason to worry.

The elevator ride seemed to take forever, and it seemed intolerably cramped as he stood sandwiched between the two very large security guards. One of them, who was probably six inches taller than Tony, looked him over from head to toe.

"So…you're worried about Miss Potts," he said after some consideration.

Fear and impatience were making Tony snappy. "Would I be here otherwise?"

The guard shrugged. "Are you two seeing each other?"

"You mean sleeping together? No. Unless you mean sleeping under the same roof on occasion, in which case, yes, we are. Not that it's any of your business," Tony snapped, his voice dripping with disdain. Thankfully, the elevator opened to Pepper's floor and they stepped out. Tony's stomach dropped before he even set foot in the apartment.

Her front door was slightly ajar. Normally, he would stop to think and realize that by opening that door he could be disturbing evidence. But this was Pepper, and all thoughts of anything other than finding her were completely gone from his mind. He pushed the door open and stepped inside, shortly followed by the security guards.

The scene before him sent chills down his spine. Pepper's apartment, which would normally be tidy and neat, just like she was, was a complete and utter wreck. Her pictures on the wall were crooked. The glass coffee table was broken and there was a large puddle of blood beneath it. A very large puddle of blood. Too much blood. Blood that his gut told him belonged to Pepper.

"Pepper!" He called her name repeatedly, going farther into the apartment. One of the security guards, not the one that had spoken to him earlier, grabbed his arm, trying to hold him back. Tony turned to face him, madness in his eyes.

"You're going to disturb evidence."

"She could be in here, hurt. Help me look." Tony commanded, shrugging him off before heading farther into the apartment. The farther in he got, the sicker he felt. There was blood splattered all along the hallway leading to her bedroom, and the floor was littered with glass. But the glass really wasn't what concerned him. What concerned him was the sheer amount of blood that was all over the place, and stony silence that filled the apartment. If she were here, she would have answered him…unless she was unconscious or…he didn't actually to consider the other option…the one that brought a stabbing pain to his chest. The one that left him without her for the rest of his life. He pushed the idea to the back of his mind, determined that it was not an option. Willing her to be alive.

"Pepper! Pepper!" His voice was frantic, and he knew it. He sounded like a desperate man. And he was. He was a man in love, desperately searching for the woman who made him whole. There was a pain in his expression that could never be properly described. It was a mixture of fury and despair, madness and cold, calculating rage. Whoever was responsible was going to be in deep shit when Tony Stark got a hold of them. They would be lucky if they could still be identified as human.

He entered her bedroom for the first time ever, and it wasn't in the way that he had always hoped. It was as he imagined it. Blue walls, with sheer drapes over the windows. She had a bookshelf, crammed full of leather bound classics…or, well, it had been. The books were on the floor now. Her bedspread was pale blue and yellow plaid. The whole room would have had an air of serenity to it if it weren't blood splattered. Her bedspread was covered with even more blood than the living room floor. The blood was still standing in wet puddle in the middle of the bed. He felt sick to his stomach, because, while not a medical doctor, he knew that no one could lose that much blood and still survive.

"Tony?" Rhodey's voice pulled him from his thoughts. He turned to see Rhodey and Happy standing in the doorway, their faces grim.

"That's a lot of blood," Tony stated, his voice dead. "How can someone lose that much blood and still live?"

Happy and Rhodey were silent, both knowing that the only answer they could give would be one that he didn't want to hear. Happy slipped away, back down the hallway to look around in the living room, leaving Rhodey and Tony standing in awkward silence. Even as Rhodey looked at Tony for a split second, he could see the resolve in his eyes, and Rhodey knew that Tony was not going to sleep until Pepper was found.

"Did someone call the police?" Tony asked, his voice firm and determined.

"Yeah. Security did it. A team should be over here any minute."

"Good."

He couldn't stand to be in her room any longer, not with that puddle of blood forcing him to accept the idea that Pepper, his Pepper, could be dead. He tried to think of any and all other possibilities that involved her being alive. He headed back down the hall where he found Happy standing in the living room, talking with a man Tony assumed to be a crime scene investigator.

_That's so much blood. Pepper is so small…well, not short, but…that's so much blood. But she has to be alive. She has to be, because I can't…a world without her is like…_

A picture of a post apocalyptic world sprang to mind. The air full of dull gray ash that suffocated him even has he breathed it in. Everything was dull and gray, as if the sun was blotted out by thick, dark clouds…This wasn't a world that he could survive in. Not one without Pepper.

"Sir? The detectives would like to speak to you," Happy said, pulling him from his far too depressing thoughts. Tony nodded.

"I'm Detective O'Shea. I'll be handling the case." The detective was a younger man, probably in his early thirties. He stood straight, and gave a firm handshake. _That's a good sign, at least. Though they could have gotten someone with more experience…_

"I know this is a little overwhelming, so we'll start at the beginning. When was the last time you saw Miss Potts?" O'Shea asked, his tone firm but gentle.

"Last night at my estate. She started getting ready to go around 11:30, I guess, after she got me to sign some paperwork. She kept trying to leave, but would remember something else for me to do. She made me read some briefs for a meeting, and she made sure I ate my spaghetti…so it was probably 11:45 by the time she got out the door. It was actually a little early for her, but we had meeting with the Board this morning at 8:30, so she left early to get some sleep."

"And what made you suspect that something was wrong this morning?"

"Last night she said that she would be back this morning at seven. She wasn't there by 7:15, and she's never late. I had Jarvis check the traffic to see—"

"Jarvis?"

"He's the artificial intelligence that runs the house."

"I see. Please continue."

"Jarvis checked the traffic report and said that there weren't any accidents or back ups that would keep her from being there. Then I tried her phone, but no one answered. It went straight to voicemail. She never lets it go straight to voicemail. Not when I call, anyway. That's just not like her."

O'Shea seemed to be taking careful notes of everything that Tony was saying. That was slightly reassuring.

"How did you find the apartment when you got here?"

"Um…the door was cracked open already. I just pushed it open. No body has moved anything, I don't think. I haven't touched anything…there's glass everywhere that I might have stepped on, but I didn't move anything. The shelves and pictures were all knocked over when I got here." Tony said, his voice hoarse with barely restrained emotion.

"The forensics team is going over the apartment now, Mr. Stark. If there is anything for them to find, they'll find it. Don't worry, I'll do the best I can to find Miss Potts. I need you to think…do you know of any enemies that she might have?"

"Enemies? She is the personal assistant to the CEO of the world's biggest weapons manufacturer. No, I can't think of any enemies at all, can you?" Tony spat, his anger getting the better of him. It seemed to take the detective by surprise.

"I need you to be straight with me, Mr. Stark. You're sarcasm isn't going to help us find her any faster."

"No, not by name. She pissed off some of the paparazzi when she got a taser and started carrying mace, but she never got any threats or anything. That was always me…I caused the trouble, not her."

"What do you mean?'" O'Shea asked.

"I mean, I'm the one who gets the death threats. I'm the one who goes gallivanting off to the other side of the world in a gold-titanium alloy suit. The odds of something happening to me are far greater than the odds of something happening to her…unless they decided to take her because of me."

O'Shea smiled sympathetically. He didn't want to answer the implied question, because he feared that he answer would do one of two things: break Tony Stark, or send him on an angry rampage. But the man deserved the truth. The sooner he knew that it was a possibility, the sooner he could help them figure out who it might be.

"That is a very real possibility, and one that we are definitely going to look into. I know that's not what you want to hear, but the sooner you accept that, the sooner you can give us a list of names, okay?" Tony just nodded silently. "Now, I know that you hear this a lot, but…are you romantically involved with Miss Potts?"

Tony clenched his jaw and ground his teeth. It seemed that everyone in the world wanted to remind him that no matter how much he wished he was, he was not involved with Pepper Potts. Not in the way that he wanted to be.

"No. I'm not." Tony felt lucky that he managed to respond. He was so tense; it felt as if he would shatter into a million tiny pieces if he moved. Millions of pieces that could never be put right again. Not if he didn't find Pepper.

"I'm sure that I'll have other questions for you, Mr. Stark, but that's all for now." O'Shea walked away, beckoned by the crime scene investigators who were pulling up pieces of Pepper's carpet to take blood samples. Happy approached his boss cautiously, not sure how he was going to react to the stupid question about to pass through his lips.

"How are you holding up?"

"Not well," Tony said shortly.

"You're not in pieces, so I'd say that's something."

"Happy…Pepper's missing. What are the odds? Nevermind, I don't really want to do the math right now."

"Yes, she is. Detective O'Shea is the best in his field. We're going to find her. They're treating this like a kidnapping, you know."

"They are?"

"They will until they have probable cause to believe that it's…something else. Besides, you'd be all over their asses if they didn't. " Happy responded tactfully, knowing that the word "murder" might send Tony over the edge.

_Damn right I would. We are going to find her, and she is going to be perfectly fine. Blood loss isn't…well, blood transfusions can fix that._

"Sir, we don't know that all that blood is hers. It could belong to her kidnapper, which means that we would have DNA evidence, and a possible name. That's a good thing," Happy told him. Apparently Tony had said something aloud about the sheer amount of blood, but he sure as hell didn't realize it.

Tony managed a cold, humorless grin that looked more like a grimace. "Yeah…that is a good thing…Where's Rhodey?"

"He's talking with the detective."

"Tell him that I'll be by the elevator if they need me."

"Will do, sir." Happy started to head back into the hallway to talk to Rhodey, before remembering something that Pepper always said. "Mr. Stark?"

"Yeah?"

"You can't give in to despair. We'll find her."

Tony left the apartment, his sense of hopeless ness being replaced by something far more destructive: pure, unadulterated rage. Happy wasn't sure which one frightened him more. He knew that Tony was desperately trying to hold it together, but the look in Tony's eyes was enough to frighten anyone. He almost pitied the poor bastard when Tony found them. At least, until he saw the puddle of blood on the living room carpet. Then he silently wished Tony the best of luck.

Out in the hallway, Tony was standing against the wall, his fists clenched. He was trying to contain the madness he was feeling, and he wasn't entirely sure how good a job he was doing. He hadn't gone on a rampage and killed anyone, which was a definite plus, but Happy's reminder was bittersweet at most. Pepper wouldn't want him to give up, but he also knew that she should be there to remind him. He ran his hands through his hair restlessly. He looked back into the apartment, assessing the scene, before whispering, to no one who could hear him.

"Where the hell are you, Pepper?"

* * *

When she woke up later, Pepper found herself on her back in a small room with poured concrete floors and gray cinderblock walls. A fluorescent light lit the dingy room, and she could hear it humming softly. She didn't want to move. The floor was smooth and cold and soothing against the fiery pain that was radiating from her ankle and her ribs. Blood was dried on her face and neck, but the cuts still stung. Every breath brought a new kind of pain that she had never experienced before. That which wasn't actively throbbing was stiff and aching. Between the throbbing and the aching and every type of pain in between, everything hurt.

"I am in so much trouble," she whispered, looking around. The ceilings were at least eight feet high, not that it was a viable escape plan. The door appeared to be made of thick, heavy steel, and since she didn't see a lock on the inside, she could only assume it was on the outside. And if the concrete walls and steel door weren't enough, she was almost one hundred percent sure that her ankle was seriously broken, which meant that her escape options were incredibly limited. Great.

_Be smart, Pepper. You're smart. Use your brain._

She moved to try to sit up, but a sharp pain stabbed through her side as she moved too quickly. She gritted her teeth against the pain. _Slow down. Try moving a little bit slower. Test your boundaries. _ Slower this time, she tried to push herself off the ground, with slightly more success. She managed to sit up, despite the fact that drawing breath was the most painful thing she had ever done. There was nothing in the room for her to sit on or lean against, so she dragged herself into one of the corners to lean against the wall. It kept her from having to hold herself up, which was more putting more strain on her than she would have imagined.

She continued to scrutinize the room—_prison cell—_she corrected herself. She could see nothing, except a small camera mounted in the corner above the door. _Fabulous. Now they already know I'm awake. Stay calm and think of a way out of here. And do not give in to despair. _ Pepper closed her eyes for a moment, desperately trying not to be overwhelmed by her current situation. _Seriously, Pepper, you survived Obadiah Stane's rampage, you can survive this. Even if Tony did kind of come flying in and save you. Don't panic, and you'll come out of this alright.._

There were voices outside the door, talking quietly. They were both men, and one of them didn't sound like a very happy camper. _Somehow, I don't think that is a good sign._

"She killed him. Greg is dead, because of her, and you want to _play_ with her?" one of the voices said. It was low pitched and scratchy with a very dangerous edge of anger in it.

"Pepper Potts is Stark's personal assistant. She probably knows more about these things than he does. We can't hack his system, and we sure as hell aren't going to be able to get to him. She is the best chance we have a getting what we want, so we are going to have to be patient." This voice was more familiar to Pepper. It was the voice that had tried to soothe her earlier. Chills went down her spine. She definitely did not like the idea of 'being patient.'

"You seem to be forgetting that _she killed my brother_. That woman is not helpless, no matter what you think. And even though patience is a virtue, you should probably think about doing this quickly before Stark finds her, because if he does, we're in deep shit."

"That is a very strong woman in there. She's going to put up a fight, and we're just going to have to take our time. This requires finesse. Now, stay." With that, the heavy steel door clicked and the door pushed open. Pepper, determined to retain what was left of her dignity, sat up as straightened her bloodstained attire and sat up straight, despite the pain.

"Hello, Miss Potts. I believe introductions are in order."

Pepper gasped, recognizing her captor for two reasons. For one, he bore a striking resemblance to Tony Stark. The hair, the build, everything about him was scarily close to that of her friend and boss. He wasn't a tall man. He was probably only an inch or so taller than she was, but he was built. His dark hair was slightly longer than it should be; just long enough for it to fall across his forehead in just the right way. She hadn't meant to give away her shock, but it was frightening the resemblance that he had to Tony Stark.

Except for his eyes. They were cold and hard, as if they had never known what it was to be happy. There were no laugh lines or even small wrinkles that would hint at a remotely happy life. Instead, his eyes were empty, and enough to frighten even the bravest of people. Pepper clenched her jaw tightly. She knew that her fear was written all over her face, but she couldn't help it. The circumstances were definitely appropriate.

_Tony has a kind face. A face that has seen more smiles and more laughter than this guy could ever dream of. Tony is a good man…this one isn't. He's empty. Not a bit of happiness or laughter in him. So don't do Tony this dishonor of comparing them._

Also, she knew for a fact that the man before her was Derrick James, a junior researcher in the Research and Development department. They had only met once or twice at the enormous company Christmas parties, but Pepper was pretty good with names and faces. She also knew that he had been in the same position at Stark Industries for as long as she had been there. From her current position, she realized that perhaps that was a little bit suspicious.

_How did you not see that, Pepper? Oh, right, you were slightly distracted by the fact that Tony's mentor had sold him out and gone on a rampage. How many more people were in on this? You have to hang on so that you can tell Tony._

She didn't want to give away her fear, but she couldn't help it. She just stared up at him in response, her lip quivering in fear. He held a small bowl, and there was a white cloth was hanging over his shoulder. It swished back and forth as he crossed the room, obviously in no hurry, and, after setting the bowl on the floor, he crouched at her side. Pepper followed him with her gaze, but didn't look into his eyes again for fear of losing any control that she had. Her heart was pounding, bile rising in her throat. Her palms were sweating, so she clenched them shut. He noticed immediately, so she unclenched them and rested them calmly (or so it would appear) in her lap.

"Miss Potts?" She didn't answer, so he tried again. "Miss Potts? I have a few questions that I need you to answer for me."

_No tears, Pepper. You're stronger than that. If Tony was able to be strong in Afghanistan when he was being tortured, you can stay strong, too. Be strong like Tony. And take your own advice. Don't give in to despair. Besides, you should be pissed off. This guy betrayed Tony. Don't despair…be angry._

He studied her expression for a long time, before he reached up to gently touch her cheek. When she recoiled instantly, he cracked a smile. It was a weird smile that didn't go all the way to his eyes. It wasn't genuine. It was terrifying.

"I haven't been a very good host, have I? How can I expect you to answer my questions if you don't even know my name? And it's hardly fair that I know you when you don't know me. I'm Derrick." He extended his hand. "It's a pleasure to meet you."

"It really isn't. Besides, I believe we've already been introduced," Pepper said, staring at his hand, her face a mixture of fear and disgust. He realized that she wasn't going to shake his hand, and so he took one of hers into his and held it for a moment. His hand was large and calloused, just like Tony's. She sat as still as possible throughout the whole thing, trying to quell her fear. When he finally let go, she returned her hand to her lap.

"You're not being very kind, Pepper. The least you could do is acknowledge my hospitality."

The edges of her mouth turned up in what could pass for grin, and nodded politely at him, trying not to upset him. She didn't know what it was he wanted yet, but she had a feeling that it was something bad. Something that she couldn't tell him. Of course, he was probably just going to kill her once she told him, so keeping her mouth shut was probably the best policy for now. She valued her life, and had every intention of making it last as long as possible.

"Pepper, I need you to tell me something. Can you do that for me?"

"What do you want to know?" She was surprised by the strength of her voice. It sounded almost normal. A bit shakier than she would have liked, but still fairly normal.

He smiled at her response. "I need to know about the shipping orders that your boss signed last night. What can you tell me about them?"

A painful shiver ran down Pepper's spine as the blood flowing through her veins turned to ice. How could he have possibly known about the shipping orders? Since Tony's return from Afghanistan, locations of weapons, and the route they took to get there had been very closely guarded. Only a few people even knew that the weapons were being shipped, and only Tony and Pepper knew where to. Derrick was just a junior researcher; he couldn't have known…

_Unless someone else is in on it, too. Someone higher up._

Those were really important shipments, filled with weapons that could do a lot of damage. She knew that she and Tony sure as hell were selling out to this guy…that meant…someone on the board. They were the only other people who knew that the weapons were going to be shipped. She said a silent, and somewhat ironic, prayer of thanks that she and Tony hadn't revealed where the weapons were going. That could be a disaster. Of course, here she was, being held captive, but at least they didn't know where the weapons were going. She couldn't afford for Derrick to know where they were going or what they contained. Not trusting herself to speak again, she bit her tongue and remained silent.

"Here," he said, dipping the cloth into the liquid in the bowl. "Let me get some of this blood off your pretty face. Your face is just too beautiful to hide behind all that blood and mess."

She tried to keep him from touching her face, but she was trapped in the corner. As he touched the cloth to one of the deeper gashes on her forehead, she shrieked in pain. That wasn't water in the bowl; it was vinegar, and it hurt like hell. She clawed at him with her hands, and managed to knock the cloth out of his hand. Very calmly, as if he did it every day, he backhanded her. Then, he straddled her legs, putting the full weight of his body on her. Despite her efforts to stay silent, Pepper cried out again, the pain almost unbearable. He reached down, picked up the cloth, and resumed his "cleansing" of her face. He didn't stop after she cried out again. He continued to wipe away at her face and neck with that vinegar soaked sponge, and with every cut he touched, there was pain. Tears stung her eyes, and she was helpless to keep them from falling.

_Damnit, Pepper, stop crying. Yes, it hurts, but you've got to be strong. Hang in there. Tony will have noticed that you're missing. Help will come, and it will find you. Until then, hang tough, and if you see an escape opportunity, take it. _

Finally, he was done wiping her cuts, but only after the vinegar in the bowl was tinged pink. He pulled himself off of her and studied her face for a moment. It was a relief to Pepper; the pain was no long completely unbearable, just excruciating.

"Now that you're all cleaned up, do you think you can tell me about those shipments?" he asked again. Pepper took a shallow but steadying breath before answering.

"I can't."

"You can't? See, I think you can. It wouldn't be that hard. Are you sure you can't tell me?"

She nodded and braced herself for pain, knowing that he wasn't going to be very happy with her answer. "Quite sure."

He drew back his hand and backhanded her across the face. It stung, and once again, she cried out, raising her hand to her quickly bruising cheek.

"Now, let's try this again. Please, will you tell me about those shipments?"

She shook her head again, only to be rewarded with another slap. She gritted her teeth, determined not to cry out, but she knew that her resolve was crumbling, and that before long she would be wailing.

_Oh God, it hurts. Now I know what Tony feels like after a night in the suit. Ugh. Stay quiet. Do not tell him anything. I can't say anything. Be strong like Tony. Be strong for Tony. Be strong for yourself. The longer I'm quiet, the longer I live. Living is definitely a good thing, at the top of my priority list. Don't despair. I have to be strong._

She felt blood trickling down her face again. One of her cuts had opened back up. It was hardly surprising…

_Those are going to scar…_

"Now, see, you're bleeding again. I need you to tell me what you know. If you tell me, it isn't going to hurt anymore. You fought me in your apartment, and that you know how much that hurt. When you finally stopped fighting, I made all the pain go away. I can do that again. I can make all the pain go away, if you'll just tell me what I need to know. Let me help you," he said, his voice calming. He was running his fingers through her hair, and she let him.

Pepper remained silent, though. Silence was the only thing she had, and she knew it. She would use it, though. She would cling to the only weapon she had, and she resolved that as long as she was able, she would stay silent. Because betraying Tony was not an option. He had already been betrayed enough in his life, and she wasn't going to add to it. Not as long as she had her wits about her.

_If I tell him about those weapons, I'm betraying Tony. I won't betray him. He's been through enough, and I'm not going to cause him that kind of pain. I'll stay strong and stay silent. I won't despair, and I'll be strong. I'm not telling him a damn thing._

"I suppose, if that's the way you want to play it…" Derrick dipped his rag in vinegar and set to work on her cuts again, trying to be patient. She wasn't that strong physically, but she was incredibly loyal, and she wasn't going to betray Stark. He had known this going in, and he knew that it was going to be hard to do, and he wasn't going to ruin this opportunity by rushing. He had plenty of time, and he was going to use whatever he had to get what he wanted. For good measure, he grabbed her pinky finger, and wrenched it to the side, effectively breaking it. Pepper whimpered in pain, and he left her that way, crying in pain on the cold concrete floor.


	4. Hanging in There

**Author's Note:** Thanks to all those who reviewed, and those who read. That makes my day. I know, I'm being mean to Pepper. It gets a little intense, but hang in there, things will look up, I promise. Let me know what you like, what you don't like, what makes you smile, etcetera.

* * *

Tony was going absolutely insane. Within a matter of hours the press had found out that something was up, and they set out to find out what it was. It was only the day after he had found out she was missing, and he had driven by Pepper's apartment to find that they had been swarmed in the lobby and on the outside of the building. He had actually stopped, and had been sitting in front of the building, staring at her balcony, for a good ten minutes before they noticed him. Then they rushed the car and kept jamming their microphones against his driver's side window. He had driven off as fast as he could without running someone over, only to find that they were swarmed outside the gates of his estate, too. Normally, Tony would stop and play the press game. But today he was not in the mood for games.

_I'd make an exception for piñatas…yeah…the person who took Pepper could totally serve as a piñata right now. Do they make spikey bats, because I could totally use one of those…stop. That isn't going to get Pepper back any faster._

He knew exactly what he was going to have to do, and he hated the very idea of it. He was not in the mood to deal with the press, and he wasn't going to be any time soon. However, Tony also knew that if he didn't do anything about it, they were just going to keep hounding at him until he released a statement.

_Besides, if I do this press conference, I'll be able to get her lots of attention. There will be lots of people seeing her face, and maybe we can find her faster. I have to think of what is best for Pepper right now, and that's finding her._

Of course, that was also probably the best course of action for Tony, too, because he was going mad without her. He didn't sleep last night, because every time he closed his eyes all he was were visions of a police detective knocking on his door, asking him to come downtown and identify her body. It was driving him stark, raving mad. Yes, she kept his schedule and made sure he was where he was supposed to be, but she also offered invaluable companionship. She took care of him, quite literally, and didn't really know what to do without her. How was he supposed to function?

His feet dragged as he paced the floor of his living room, staring at the piano where, just two nights ago, he had been teasing Pepper, trying to get her to stay the night at his place. Not that anything would have happened that night.

_Who am I kidding? Of course something would have happened. Maybe not something huge like a declaration of love followed by hours of love-making, but I would have used that opportunity to my advantage. Now I'm thinking that just having her nearby again would be an advantage. No, not an advantage…a comfort. It's almost a need now. Hell, it is a need. Trying to live like this, without her, all the time…it's not going to work._

Home seemed emptier without her. She was always there, forcing him to go to things that he didn't want to go to. Everything from benefits to board meetings to dinner in his kitchen, she made him go, and she was always there, too. But now, the only sounds in the house were those of the waterfall and his shoes on the floor. The familiar "click-clack" of her heels was gone.

_I have to find her. Now._

"Jarvis, prepare the suit," Tony commanded.

"Sir, I'm sensing elevated heart rate and respiration. These are signs of stress. I don't know that this is the best of ideas—"

"Just do it, Jarvis."

Tony headed down to his workshop to suit up. Jarvis was right. It was reckless and stupid to go out in the suit when he could hardly think straight. It was something that the old Tony would do. But he couldn't sit idly by while Pepper was gone. The police weren't going to tell him anything, not for a while, anyway, and he couldn't just sit around. Not when he had the capability of doing something else.

He was almost completely suited up when Jarvis spoke to him. "Colonel Rhodes is entering the premises, sir."

"Shit," Tony swore. It didn't take a genius to know that Rhodey was not going to like this idea. Not one bit.

"Tony, I was just coming to check on—what the _hell_ do you think you're doing?" he asked, noticing that Tony was almost fully suited up.

"You know perfectly well what I'm doing it."

"This is a bad idea, and you know it. Going off half-cocked looking for something to smash isn't going to find her any faster. It's also not going to make you feel better. Not really. Not when you come back, aching and bruised and realize that Pepper isn't here to patch you up like she normally is."

"Gee, thanks, Rhodey, that was very encouraging."

"You look like hell."

"I still look better than I feel."

"Tony, you know that you're not going to solve anything by flying off into the night when you're feeling like this. You're not thinking straight."

"Not thinking straight? Rhodey, right now, my first and only priority is to find Pepper. If I have to fly across this city and run Jarvis's facial recognition program on every red headed woman I see, I'll do it. If that's what it takes to find her, I'll do it. Now, you can help me out by keeping the sky clear, or you can get in the way. What's it going to be?" Tony asked, his tone leaving no room for argument.

Rhodey sighed in frustration and turned to walk back upstairs. "I'm going. Call me if you find anything."

"Of course." And with that, Tony was flying. Normally, flying would be an adrenaline rush. When he flew, he felt completely and totally free. Not so much tonight. Tonight he just felt…empty. Empty and a little bit lost.

He started flying low in populated areas, doing just as he had told Rhodey he would. All the red headed women that he saw, he ran facial recognition scans on, comparing them to a photo of Pepper that Jarvis had on file. With each one that didn't match, Tony grew more and more desperate.

"Sir, I'm detecting that your heart rate and respiration are increasing yet again. I do not recommend flying when you are clearly in distress—"

"Save it for someone who cares, Jarvis."

He guided the suit over a sketchier part of LA and continued looking. No Pepper. Of course, he was very grateful that he hadn't found her corpse in a back alley—

_Stop thinking like that. She is alive. She might be a little bit worse for wear, but she is alive and I am going to find her. Stay positive. As Pepper would say, don't give in to despair. _

Bitter laughter sprang forth from his lips, almost of its own accord. He remembered all the times that she had told him that, and each time, he had never taken her seriously. He would tease her jokingly, but he had never once thought that he would need to take her advice seriously. Now he was clinging to that advice like Linus to his safety blanket. Wherever she was, he was also hoping that she was taking her own advice.

_I will find you, Pepper. Just hang on, and I will find you…_

Having found no sign of Pepper, he started to fly around aimlessly, hoping that maybe flying would take some of the edge off. His other option for taking the edge off was the bottle of scotch he had back at the mansion. He knew that he was going to need his mind clear to find her, and that made scotch out of the question. Alcohol would impair his judgment, and Pepper was just too important to risk screwing things up for a temporary relief.

There was a soft thud as he landed. He wasn't even sure where he had set himself down until he stopped and took in his surroundings. He was on the balcony of a tall, modernist looking building. Pepper's apartment. Chills ran through him as he looked through her sliding glass doors into the living room.

The bloody carpet was still there, as was the broken coffee table. The only thing that seemed different from when he had been there earlier was that there was a large square of carpet missing. It had been taken by the crime scene investigators for DNA testing. It was strange to see an empty square in the middle of that bloody puddle. It reminded him of…well, himself. Everything around him was wrong and weird, like the blood on Pepper's carpet, and there he was in the middle…empty without her.

Tears were streaming down his cheeks before he even realized it. Tears for Pepper and the violence that he knew she had experienced. Violence that he had hoped she would never have to experience…he was the one who flew around the world in a suit of gold-titanium alloy, destroying weapons and being shot at. He always thought that something would happen to him before it would ever happen to her. She was Pepper…his rock, his strength…

Perhaps it was selfish, but he was crying for himself, too. He was crying for his own loss. He didn't have Pepper anymore, and it was hurting him, and he cried for his own pain.

_God, I'm selfish. She's out there, with God knows what happening to her, and all I can think about is how much it hurts __**me **__to be without her. _

Unable to take the guilt anymore, he decided that it was time to go home.

"Jarvis?"

"Yes, sir?"

"Bring me home, please."

"Of course."

When he arrived home, Jarvis promptly informed him that he had several voicemail messages.

"Who are they from?"

"One is from Colonel Rhodes. The other is from a detective O'Shea of the Los Angeles Police Department."

Tony's heart jumped into his throat. "Play the message from detective O'Shea, please."

"This is detective O'Shea from the Los Angeles Police Department. I'm looking for Mr. Tony Stark to speak with him about the Pepper Potts case. Mr. Stark, I'm sure you've noticed the amount of press that this case is getting, and while it is very good that Miss Potts's face is being broadcasted on every major news network, it is also making it very difficult to investigate. The press want answers. We need to hold a press conference to let the public know what is going on before things get very out of hand. If you could call me back when you get this, we can try to set up a meeting and get things arranged. That would be great…My number is…"

Tony started zoning out after the important part. Jarvis could get the phone number and such.

A press conference. He really didn't want to do this, but he already knew just how crazy the press was getting. As he flipped on the television and surfed through the channels, he realized that everyone had a different theory, and that most of them were completely ridiculous. E! News believed that perhaps she was stricken with the bubonic plague, brought back by Tony from one of his various missions. The one that took the cake, though, was TMZ. According to TMZ, Pepper was pregnant and had fled to Brazil to have his lovechild.

_I would rather her be having my love child than be missing. Damn vultures. The idea of children isn't bad, though…_

"What time is it, Jarvis?"

"12:04 AM, sir."

_Too late to call O'Shea. Never mind. Fuck it. This is Pepper._

It only took O'Shea one ring to answer his phone. He sounded completely and totally alert, which worked very well for Tony.

"O'Shea."

"It's Tony Stark. You said something about a press conference?"

"You're not one for mincing words are you?"

"Not when it's about Pepper. Now, about the press conference…"

"We have some information we would like to release to the public, and I'm sure you'd like to clear the air of some of those rumors that are spreading about like wildfire," O'Shea said.

"Yeah. So, you wanted a meeting?"

"To discuss the finer points of it all. I say, the sooner, the better."

"Tomorrow, then. Noon, at Stark Industries." Despite the fact that it sounded like a suggestion, O'Shea knew damn well that it wasn't.

"I can do that," O'Shea agreed.

"Good. I'll see you then."

The conversation had been short and sweet, and Tony appreciated it. Tomorrow was going to be longer than today, and he definitely needed sleep. He took a quick shower and went to bed.

Half an hour later, unable to fall asleep, Tony rose from his bed and started walking with a purpose towards a wing of the house that he rarely visited. It had recently become Pepper's wing. Well, that's how he thought of it, anyway. She had needed a place to sleep when she stayed late to see him home from his missions. He had come home several times to find her asleep on his sofa at three in the morning, and he knew that if she kept up that schedule, she was going to wear herself ragged. Thus the wing.

Privacy was immensely important to Pepper. This didn't stop him from trespassing into what he deemed "her wing," but it did stop him at her bedroom. He never entered her bedroom without her permission…which meant that he had never seen her bedroom.

Not until today, anyway, and he had seen them both. While he had always wanted to see her bedroom, he had never wanted to see it like this. He had always hoped to see it after she had invited him in. Or maybe carrying her into her bedroom, to her bed, where they would make love. But never had he planned to see it with an ache in his heart.

It was exactly as he had imagined it would be, very similar to her room at home. The walls were a pale blue, and the coverlet was blue and white plaid. She had put a bookshelf in one corner, crammed full of everything from more of her favorite leather bound classics to manuals on tax law to the user's manual for her Blackberry. There was a mirror on the wall, and a simple dresser underneath it. Atop it, there sat a ballpoint pen and a clip board and a pair of small black earrings.

Tony went to the dresser and slowly pulled open the drawer. In it were several t-shirts in the drawer, all of which looked as if they would swallow Pepper. He pulled several of them out of the drawer and held them tightly to him, breathing deep. They smelled like her…clean and bright and perfectly Pepper. He kicked off his shoes and, still clutching the shirts, lay down on Pepper's bed. Comforted by her smell, he finally fell asleep.

* * *

Pepper couldn't really keep track of time, perhaps because she was spending large amounts of it sleeping. It could also be contributed to the fact that she didn't have a watch. So when he returned later, she wasn't exactly sure how long he had been gone. She was mostly grateful that he had left, and that she had been able to get some sleep. Being in pain was apparently much more exhausting than she had imagined. Sleep also gave her a chance to escape the pain, which was definitely a good thing.

But when he finally returned, he started talking to her. It was all ridiculous rambling, really. Rambling was cute on Tony, mostly because there was such a charming, childlike quality about him when he rambled. On Derrick, it was incredibly obnoxious. He was cold and calculating and Pepper had no doubt that everything that came out of his mouth was said to get some kind of response from her. She closed her eyes and tucked her chin to her chest, determined not to look at him.

_Don't give him that luxury. Stick to your guns, Potts. Like those movie previews say…Silence is golden._

"I was really surprised that you remembered me, Pepper. Can I call you Pepper? Miss Potts just seems so formal, and, obviously, we're very informal people here—"

_Primitive seems more the proper term._

"—I mean, we only met for a brief minute, and you are practically hostessing the whole thing because Stark was too drunk to do so. I think it was quite a feat that you managed to keep him around long enough to give a speech, because that evening I think he was eyeing a tall brunette from the marketing department. I can't remember her name, even though I had seen her several times, and even talked to her. That's why it so impressive that you remember my name."

"It's my job to know names and faces," Pepper said. She didn't want to speak, and she knew that it was a bad idea, but there was only so much rambling that she could tolerate.

"And you're very good at your job. You remember names and faces and schedules and shipping orders. I'm betting you could tell me where the last ten shipments have gone, couldn't you?" he asked.

_Subtlety is definitely not his art form. Unfortunately, I'm thinking that torture is. Stay silent, Pepper. Stay silent. It does not matter if he insults you. You know differently. You are a highly respected woman, and at some point in time, you will get out of this. Hang in there, and don't give in._

"I know. You won't take the bait. You're a better woman than that. It seems so strange…the name Pepper. It doesn't quite…it doesn't capture you. I mean…Pepper…that's such an interesting name. It's not your birth name, obviously. Your birth name is Virginia…so where did Pepper come from?" He tilted her chin up, and cupped her cheek. The feel of his hands on her made her skin crawl. He took her face between both of his hands and stroked her cheeks with his thumbs. "It's hardly a personality thing. You're not a feisty creature? Or is it because of these charming freckles that...pepper your cheeks?"

_Don't respond to him. He's trying to get a rise out of you. This is all calculated. Don't give in to him. _

"I think it must be the freckles…they are quite adorable. But then, 'adorable' has never been Tony Stark's style, has it? It's always been the dumb blondes and leggy brunettes. There's hardly room for a cute little thing like yourself. Tell me, did he give you that nickname?"

"It's none of you damn business," she spat, before she was able to stop herself. She opened her eyes long enough to see the look of triumph on his face, before jerking her face out of his grasp and turning away.

_Damnit, Pepper. Stop responding. Tony's taste in women is not of concern here. What's important is that you stay quiet and not betray Tony. You __**will not**__ give in to this…monster. You will stand firm. Be strong like Tony._

The truth was, he had given it to her. She had come into his office with her arms full of spreadsheets and calculations from the accounting department. She had found a major error in some of the accounting and had tried to explain it to her boss, who had ignored her because those calculations had been made by Tony Stark himself. Pepper had no scruples about telling him that he was wrong, and she did. He had made a multi-million dollar mistake. Upon realizing that Pepper was right, he quickly hired her as his personal assistant.

He'd noticed her freckles, and before she knew it, he was calling her Pepper. She hadn't really understood the nickname, because she'd tried to ignore the flirting, but before long, she'd realized that it was going to be an everyday thing. So she'd finally asked him about it.

"Your freckles," he had said. "They're 'peppered' across your cheeks…and in a most becoming fashion. They really draw attention to your complexion and your bone structure—"

"Thank you, Mr. Stark, but I really would prefer that you keep the nicknames to a minimum," she had answered.

"It suits you, and so it stays," He'd shot back.

He was right. It did suit her. More so than Virginia, anyway. She couldn't remember the last time anyone had called her Virginia. It was probably her mother, and her mother had passed away five years ago. No, now she was Pepper Potts, PA, extraordinaire.

Who also happened to be in deep, deep trouble.

"So, he did give it to you. I figured as much. He might not be fucking you, but he did give you a nickname, which I hear is more than he does for the other floozies he takes to his bed," Eric commented.

_Other?! Hmph! You're hardly a floozy, Pepper, and you know it. Tony actually respects you, and that's all that matters._

"Now, tell me...I know that he respects you enough to tell you where those weapons are going, and what they are. I would really like it if you told me all the details of this shipment. Because I really don't like hurting you, but if you don't tell me…I'll have to continue. And I know that you think I'm pathetic—don't lie, I can see it in your face, Pepper Potts—but I can really fuck you up. I think that you are very lovely, but I can and will destroy you. I can slice your face until you are unrecognizable. I can slip these lovely pliers under your fingertips and pry them right off. Now, I don't want to, and I know that you don't like the pain, so just tell me what I want to know," he said. It was weird to hear threats and swear words being said with such a gentler, soothing tone, and it chilled Pepper to her core. This man was absolutely, one-hundred percent, certifiably insane.

She shook her head, already bracing for what she knew was to come.

He had a pair of needle nosed pliers in his hands, and Pepper didn't want to think of what he was going to do with them, even though she knew exactly what was coming. She braced herself against the walls, and tried to stand before he could straddle her again, but he grabbed her by her broken ankle and pulled her to the floor. He quickly straddled her, and tried to grab her hands, but she kept struggling, trying to keep him from getting a good grip. Given that she was flat on her back, she was at a considerable disadvantage, and he eventually managed to get a good grip on her hands. There was a slight stab as he jabbed the ends of the pliers under her nails. She bit her lip and looked away, hoping that would take some of the horror out of what was about to happen.

It didn't. She managed to stay silent for about three seconds before she bit through her lip. He didn't even notice, and continued to tear at her fingernails.

_Don't despair. Don't despair. Don't despair…escape. You have to escape. _

The taste of her own blood in her mouth made her nauseous, and she quickly vomited up the contents of her stomach. She tried to turn her head to the side so that she wouldn't drown in her own vomit, but he grabbed her head and forced her to stare at the ceiling as she struggled to breathe. At the last moment before she inhaled her stomach contents, he let go of her head and let her vomit on the floor. She continued spitting for the next few minutes, trying to get the taste of vomit and blood out of her mouth. It wasn't until later that she realized that she was laying in her own vomit.

She could feel the blush rise in her cheeks out of sheer humiliation. Tears were once again streaming down her cheeks, and she was helpless to do anything about it, really. She couldn't stop crying, and it was obscenely painful to move. Derrick stood over her, laughing.

"If your boss could see you now. I mean, that would kill any guy's ambitions of sleeping with you."

_Who would have thought that you'd see the day when you were reduced to this, Pepper? What are you doing? Why aren't you fighting this? You're not going to tell him anything about the weapons anyway, so there's no point in not trying to piss him off. Stop taking it and do something. _

Before she could think better of it, she kicked him in the shin with her good leg. It did no good, really, because she was too weak for it to really have any affect, but it definitely pissed him off. He knelt beside her and lifted her upper body off the ground by the lapels of her jacket, before slamming her back to the floor. Her head hit the concrete, and stars began to swim before her eyes.

_Okay, so that was slightly stupid, Pepper. Tony has only the highest regard for you, and you know it. He'd be pissed at Derrick, not you. This is not your fault. Do. Not. Despair. Tony respects you, and that's all that matters._

She wondered when that became all that mattered to her. She was usually concerned about how the public would perceive things, but in this moment of clarity, no doubt brought on her by her incredibly recent head trauma, she realized that Tony's respect really was the only thing that was an absolute necessity for her.

_You love him, Pepper. You love Tony._

That realization brought a special warmth that spread from her chest all the way to the tips of her toes. Despite the pain and the disgusting conditions, she managed a brief smile in that moment.

"Tony…I…Tony…"

Her smile was rewarded with another swift blow to the head, but she fell into oblivion with a smile on her face and warmth in her heart.


	5. Alice

**Author's Note:** Thanks to everyone who read and reviewed. It brightens my day immensely. This one is longer than the others, but...I'm hoping that you all enjoy it. Let me know. And constructive criticism is totally welcome. And...Have a Merry Christmas!

* * *

Not that she hadn't been worried about her safety beforehand, but Pepper got exceptionally more worried when someone she hadn't seen before came into her room. The look that this new guy was giving her was not exactly friendly, and it made her even more uncomfortable. She worked up her courage to ask this man a question in hopes of getting a slightly better idea of what was going on.

"Um…who are you?" she asked, her voice timid.

"That's none of your damn business," he spat.

Pepper fell silent, not wanting to piss him off anymore than he already seemed to be. She recognized his voice. He was the one that had been talking to Derrick about someone killing his brother. Great...instead of being cold and calculating, he was…royally pissed off.

"You killed my brother, you know," he said suddenly. She was immensely confused, and it showed on her face.

_Killed his brother? There's no way. Keep cool, Pepper. Find out what the hell is going on._

"I don't really take very kindly to people killing my family members, so you'll have to forgive me for being a bit _pissed._"

_Most people don't really take kindly to being kidnapped, either._

"I would kill you myself, but Derrick seems to be very good at dragging it out. I would have lost it with your annoying self and killed you already. But I guess all that time working at your fancy company taught him some patience. Did you know that he's a medical doctor? He knows about," he motioned to his abdomen. "guts and stuff. I bet he could make it last a long time, darlin'."

_It won't last too long. Tony will find you…escape is looking fairly impossible, but Tony will find you. Don't despair. Don't do it._

"Don't scare the poor thing," Derrick said as he pushed the door open and entered the room. Pepper cringed and tried to focus on breathing instead of the impending torture. She took slow, steady breaths. Deep breaths were impossible without extreme pain, but she had managed to adjust.

Derrick crossed the room to where she was slumped in the corner and took her into his arms. She fought every step of the way, beating at his chest and shoulders, which were hard as rock. Pain shot through her hands as she did so, but it was worth it to know she was causing him trouble. He held her to his chest, and as he did so, she caught a wiff of a familiar smell. The smell of axel grease and sweat and cologne…Tony. God, he smelled like Tony. Before she realized what she was doing, she leaned into him and took a deep breath, despite the pain, desperately wanting to be closer to Tony.

Except that he wasn't Tony. He smelled like him, and he shouldn't, and it hurt her soul.

_Tony…why does he smell like Tony? He is wrong for that smell. Tony is good and trustworthy and __**warm**__. Derrick isn't. He shouldn't smell like my Tony. He isn't good enough. _

"Yeah? I thought you might like a little reminder of what you get to go home to when you finally tell me what I want to know," Derrick said, stroking her hair. Pepper pulled away, as far away as his arms would let her get, anyway. He chuckled. "Did I break the spell for you, Pepper? Perhaps that is best. I find that reality can be painful if neglected too long."

_The reality, Pepper, is that __**Tony will find you**_**, **_and you __**will hold on until then.**__You might be a little bit worse for wear, but you will hang on, and you will get out of this alive. _

"How did you…how did you get his shirt?" she asked. She had seen him wearing this shirt just last week. She remembered it because he had been waiting on her to confirm some last minute details on a meeting with, ironically enough, the R&D department, when we wandered into his workshop and started toying with some specs. Luckily he hadn't decided to start working on the hot rod yet, or the white button down would have been completely lost to grease stains.

"I can't very well give away my secrets, now, can I?"

_What did you do with that shirt, Pepper? It has to be starched…dry cleaners! _

"Did you bribe the dry cleaners, or did you steal it?"

"You're very quick, Pepper. You would be amazed at the doors that money can open for you…Well, you probably aren't. After all, you work for Tony Stark, so you see millions out the door everyday."

"Would you let me go, please?" she asked quietly, but with hatred. She didn't like being this close to him. Touching him made her skin crawl and her stomach uneasy. She hated to admit it to herself, but she was developing a fear that his evil ways, the nasty qualities of his character, were going to rub off on her by simply being too close to him. It was irrational, she knew, but it didn't stop her from feeling that way.

"I just want you to know that I don't like it when you make me hurt you. I would really like nothing more than for all of this to stop, but you just won't let me. I can comfort you and make things better, if you would just let me. Don't you see that?"

"I won't betray Tony."

Derrick smiled at her gently, she could see the cogs turning in his mind, trying to think of what he could say next to throw her off and make her talk.

_You're not going to let him get to you. What he is doing to you is in no way your fault or Tony's. This is Derrick's fault. Not yours or Tony's._

"He wouldn't want you to be in pain. If stopping your own pain is a betrayal, I don't think that Tony Stark is half the man you believe him to be."

"Then what does that make you? After all, you're the one who's causing it." Pepper spat, her voice full of hatred for the man in front of her.

As a child, her grandmother had always told her that she should never hate anyone. "You dislike what they do, but you should not hate the person," her grandmother had said. Throughout her life, Pepper had kept that in mind and really tried to follow it. She broke that rule for Derrick. She was actually willing to throw the entire rule book out the window for Derrick, because he was a monster. Anyone who could methodically torture an innocent person like this was most definitely a monster.

For the first time in his life, Dr. Derrick James was left speechless. It was not a feeling that he was familiar with, and not one that he particularly liked. His hand twitched with the overwhelming urge to hit the red-headed woman in front of him, but he checked the impulse. Brute force alone was not working, which, to be entirely honest, suited him just fine.

Pepper Potts was, mentally, one of the strongest people had had ever met. Not as strong as he was, of course, but those were few and far between. In his opinion, anyway. As much as he hated to destroy a woman who was almost his equal, he was also eager for the challenge. Sure, he had tried to get under her skin here and there, but he had not really put a lot of effort into it. Now that he knew her weakness, he was going to press and press until she was in pieces and ready to tell him whatever it was that he wanted to hear.

He had kept up with the news, legitimate and tabloid, since he had started working at Stark Industries; he paid even more attention to it since he had gotten his own slice of the dealing-under-the-table pie. It was always interesting and important to keep up with the actions of one's boss, he though, and even more so since Stark had decided to play superhero in a red and gold suit. One thing he had noticed throughout the news was that someone always made mention of his "loyal assistant, the famous Pepper Potts," shortly followed by the implication that she was head over heels in love with Stark. He had never believed it until she had lost her temper with him earlier.

He mentioned the idea of Stark thinking she was disgusting, and she was willing to waste her dwindling strength kicking. She reacted more strongly to insults against Tony than she did to insults against her person. He hadn't missed the smile that spread across her bloody face as she said his name, the look in her eyes…it all gave her away to him. That's too bad. He'd thought she was better than that.

"Pepper, I'm just a man trying to do his job—"

"Your job is working for Stark Industries, helping to develop new technology. Last time I checked, we didn't have any plans for high-tech pliers on the books." Her voice was sickly sweet. It was like candy made of antifreeze: sweet at first, but full of poison.

"Pepper, just tell me what I need to know," he said, pulling her to his shirt front where she once again was assaulted by the smell of the man she loved.

_That isn't Tony, Pepper. Not matter how much you wish it was. Get out of here and you can see him again._

"No!" she shouted. She hit him stomach, right in the soft area above his belly button. Tension seemed to spread down his body from his scalp to his toes. She could feel his gritting his teeth, and he fisted his hands in her hair. Then he took a deep breath and was fine again.

"Well, if that's how you're going to be…we're just going to have to do this the hard way.

Derrick tried to pick her up, and she went limp. Worrying that he may have caused major organ damage with his previous actions, Derrick leaned in close to her mouth to listen to her breath sounds. Pepper used that opportunity to put her strength into a head butt, which caught him right on the nose. With great satisfaction, she heard a crack as his nose broke. She couldn't stop the smile from spreading across her face.

_There you go, Pepper. Be angry. Take that anger and hold on to it, and direct it all at him. He is the one hurting you, and you're going to do the same for him._

"David, take Miss Potts to her bedroom." he said, he voice sweet, despite the blood dripping from his nose. David, the large, angry man, picked her up roughly and carried her through what appeared to be a warehouse into another room. Pepper was stunned to see an exact replica of her bedroom from home. The bedspread, the windows [that weren't really windows, she suspected, but they looked real enough] the bookshelf…it was all exactly as she had it at her home.

_How long have they been preparing for this? This isn't something that happens in the time that they've had me here._

David dumped her on the bed and left quickly. Before she had time to find a makeshift weapon, Derrick appeared, he nose already starting to swell. He carried a plate of food and a juice box. Trusting him was not on her list of things to do, but she also knew that she was desperately hungry. He set the plate down on her bedside table.

"I thought you might be hungry, so I brought you some food."

Pepper didn't acknowledge him, but she did eye the food carefully, checking it all over for razorblades and the like. Finding it clean, she started to eat; slowly at first, trying not to show her extreme hunger, but after the first few bites, she couldn't hold back anymore. She tore into the food and started scarfing it down like an animal. There were but a few bites left when she realized that she could feel something burning on her lips. Her eyes went wide as she stared accusingly at him.

"You drugged me again, you…sonuvabish…"

Her words blurred together as the drugs really hit her system. Like before, she knew exactly what was coming.

_Stay awake, Pepper…stay awake…_

She didn't manage. Derrick just smiled, proud of his handiwork. He wasn't pleased about his broken nose, but when she awoke in a few hours, she would be feeling the aftereffects of an experimental drug he helped to develop. It would leave her mind slightly hazy, very paranoid and extremely, extremely afraid. Just the way he wanted her.

* * *

Detective Robert O'Shea had barely been off the phone with Tony Stark for ten minutes when his phone rang again. It was an old buddy of his, Ian Bryant, who now worked in the homicide department. They had known each other for a while. They used to play rec-league basketball together when they were younger. This history is what let O'Shea know that he wouldn't be getting this call if it weren't important.

"O'Shea."

"Hey, Bobby, it's Ian."

"I see that."

"I heard you got the DNA results back on the Pepper Potts case."

"You heard right. Some of it was hers, and some of it belonged to a Gregory Lane. He's got a rap sheet as long as my leg. Everything from armed robbery to exposing himself in public. Why is this important?" O'Shea asked, impatient. He liked Bryant a lot; he was a great guy. But O'Shea was ready to go to bed.

"Because I'm at a crime scene staring down at your guy. He's dead."

"Fuck! Okay, where are you?"

Bryant told him, and O'Shea was out the door in record time. He made what would normally be a thirty minute drive in ten. As he climbed from the car, Bryant was already waiting on him, ready to give him all the facts.

"Where is he?" O'Shea asked.

"Back there," Bryant answered, gesturing down an alley, to one of the darkened corners. Bryant led O'Shea down the alley, where he could see the corpse tucked against the wall.

"The dumpster had to be moved to get to the corpse, but someone had pinned him between the dumpster and the wall," Bryant informed him.

"Do you know cause of death?"

"Officially, no. The medical examiner is waiting in the morgue as we speak, ready to cut this guy open and see what happened. However, I'm willing to go out on a limb and say that he bled to death."

"Wounds?"

"Single stab wound to the neck," Bryant answered, his voice terse.

"Knife?"

"No. You have a look and see if you can tell me what it is."

O'Shea knelt by the corpse. For a guy that supposedly bled to death, there was not a lot of blood at the crime scene. There was a medium sized round hole in the guy's carotid artery. Upon seeing it, several things fell into place for Bobby O'Shea.

"You haven't found the murder weapon yet, have you?" he asked.

"No, not yet. Why?"

"Because I already have it in evidence at the station."

"What are you talking about?"

"Tomorrow, or should I say 'later today,' I'm meeting with Tony Stark to talk about Pepper Potts. Be there. Meet me at the station and we'll go together. I'll fill you in on the way. But now, I need some sleep."

"You shouldn't be doing this! Most murderers are caught within the first 48 hours after a murder, you know that," Bryant protested as O'Shea headed to his car.

"Trust me, your murderer's not going anywhere she hasn't already gone," O'Shea said as he got into his car and headed home.

* * *

Tony had everything ready for the press conference by 11:30, and he spent every moment after that pacing and swearing.

"Sir, it's only 11:30. He'll be here," Happy said.

"Whatever happened to people being early?" Tony snapped, continuing his pacing.

"Not half an hour, sir."

Tony continued his pacing as Happy stood in the background, terse. There was normally never silence in the lobby of Stark Industries, but today, it was eerily silent. It seemed that everyone who came in was wearing black, as if in mourning for Pepper. But they shouldn't be…Pepper was not dead. Tony believed that with all his heart, as if he could keep her alive by sheer force of will.

_Pepper is going to be fine. You're going to find her and all will be well. _

O'Shea finally showed up at quarter til twelve with another man in tow that Tony had never seen before. They entered the lobby noisily, which was almost a welcome relief from the silence, Tony thought. He nodded at them and they proceeded wordlessly into Tony's office, where Tony, O'Shea and the newcomer sat around the desk. Happy stood a few steps back.

"Okay, what's going on?" Tony said cutting to the chase.

O'Shea pulled a small baggie out of his coat pocket and laid it on Tony's desk. Tony picked it up and studied it, his eyes widening. It was the stiletto heel of a woman's shoe…the shoe that Pepper had been wearing when he'd last seen her. It was also covered in blood.

"Where did you find this?" Tony asked.

"We found this in Miss Potts's apartment. Can you confirm that this was part of her shoe?" the new detective asked.

"Who are you?"

"This is detective Bryant. He's from homicide."

Tony's heart plummeted, and it showed on his face. His face, which once held hopeful determination, was completely void of any emotion. And his eyes…they were the worst. They were dead, as if he would never know happiness or anger or any type of emotion ever again. It was the face of a broken man.

"We got the results back from the blood we found in the apartment. A large portion of that belonged to a man named Gregory Lane. The blood on that heel belongs to him. He had a rap sheet a mile long. Everything from armed robbery to exposing himself to the kiddies."

Tony just nodded, not really absorbing anything that he was hearing. He was too hung up on the idea that his Pepper was dead.

"Detective Bryant is working the homicide case. We found Mr. Lane's body this morning in an alley—"

"Wait, he's dead?" Tony asked, his spirits rising.

_Pepper! They didn't find her body! _ He sent up a small prayer of thanks.

"Yes. Do you recognize this man?" Bryant asked, pushing a photo across the table. The man in the photo was dead, with a round hole in his neck, right through his carotid artery. He probably would have bled to death in a few minutes. He looked slightly familiar, but Tony couldn't place him.

"He looks very familiar, but I can't tell where I know him from. We can check in the employee database to see if he's ever worked here," Tony answered.

"Okay. Do you have someone who can do that for us?" O'Shea suggested.

"I can run it from this computer. We'll scan the picture and run a facial recognition program." Tony took the picture and scanned it quickly, then started to check the database for him.

"Sir, you never answered my question. Is that Miss Potts's shoe?" Bryant asked again.

"Yes. She was wearing them the day she was—the day she went missing."

"Are you absolutely sure?"

"One hundred percent positive. Those were new. She had just gotten them a week or so ago. They weren't completely broken in yet, so she wore them because we were at the mansion and didn't have much going on. That way it wouldn't matter if she took them off," Tony said.

His mind was whirling…Gregory Lane's blood was on that heel, which they had found at Pepper's apartment. A lot of the blood they found in the bedroom belonged to him…that was a lot of blood. A hole in his carotid artery…He studied the heel more closely, and then the photo. A light bulb came on in his mind.

"She killed that son of a bitch."

O'Shea and Bryant looked at each other, some unspoken communication going on between them. They had figured that out quickly, with exactly the same concluding thought. Of course, they shouldn't wish someone dead, but after seeing the sheer amount of Pepper's blood spilled at the crime scene (Bryant through photos), they definitely did. Pepper Potts just inspired strong emotion in people.

"We believe that she did, yes. In the struggle, it is entirely possible that she kicked him in the throat and punctured his carotid artery. This means that we are definitely looking for more than one person, because there is no way that he could have taken her after he lost all that blood. As I said, he had a previous record. We know that he often worked with his brother, David. I need you to look at this picture. Is he familiar?" O'Shea said, pushing another photo across the table.

The guy in this photo was alive, and he definitely bore a resemblance to his brother. He was also very familiar, but Tony couldn't be sure if that was because he had seen his brother or if it was because he had actually seen him somewhere. Tony nodded.

"He seems familiar, but I don't know if it's because he looks like his brother or if I've seen him somewhere before. I'm sorry," he confessed.

Happy took several steps closer to the desk, eyeing the photographs, obviously deep in thought. Then he picked up the photo of David Lane, and studied further before speaking. "I know this guy. He's got a job in security."

Tony looked at Happy, shocked. "That's impossible. We don't hire people with records."

"Then he must have applied and gotten hired with a false identity, because he definitely works in security. I see him a lot when around the Research and Development department. My money says that you recognize his brother for the same reason," Happy said, his voice full of conviction. "Run the facial recognition program. I'm almost positive you'll find him there."

Tony nodded, quickly scanned the photo and began searching for him. As the scan for David took off, the one for Gregory finished. Sure enough, Happy was right. He also worked in security under the name of Gregory Benson. His post was in the Research and Development department. Tony quickly printed his file and handed it to the detectives.

"Do you always keep such thorough records on your employees?" O'Shea asked, noting the length and detail of the file. It held all sorts of details: next of kin, every job he'd ever held, work attendance, birth certificate, family tree…everything.

"Pepper suggested that we start keeping detailed records, especially after…after several instances of people selling my weapons under the table. A lot can be learned about a person based on their family, previous jobs, etcetera," Tony explained.

"Well, it's going to be extremely helpful. It seems that Mr. Lane has been absent from work since the day before Miss Potts disappeared," O'Shea noted.

"Makes sense, given his…condition," Tony said, unable to keep the smile off his face or the satisfaction out of his voice at Gregory Lane's 'condition.'

"Found the brother," Happy said, holding up a printout. "It seems that David Benson also works for Stark Industries." The rest of David's file printed quickly. Tony took it off the printer and began to read over it, much to Bryant's dismay. Bryant was forced to read it over Tony's shoulder.

"It seems that David has been missing from work since the day Miss Potts was taken, also," Bryant observed.

"It makes sense. Pepper wouldn't just let someone hold her hostage. She would fight them. They would have to keep her under surveillance twenty-four seven, and in someplace relatively secluded," Tony said. "So, what do we tell the press?"

O'Shea smiled. He was developing a respect for Pepper Potts, despite the fact that he had never met the woman. Just seeing some of the ideas she instituted, like the intensively detailed files, made him respect her. He could understand some of Tony Stark's desperation to have her back. And they were going to find her. He just hoped she was still alive then.

* * *

It was 2:29 and every reporter within a fifty mile radius (and some from farther) were crammed into one of the large rooms reserved for press conferences. No one had seen hide nor hair of Tony Stark, Pepper Potts, or the LAPD, which was highly unusual. By now, word of Pepper's disappearance had spread far and wide, and the press was waiting not-so-patiently for an answer.

Promptly at 2:30, Tony Stark came into the room and stepped up to the podium, followed closely by O'Shea. Instead of the laid back smile that they were all used to, the mob of reporters saw a somber and terse Tony Stark. He was dressed neatly, but there were dark, tired circles under his eyes; there was a fragility in his movements that made him seem ancient.

He stood at the podium for a moment and took a deep breath, trying to prepare himself for what he was about to say, and also for the onslaught of what he knew he was going to face after making this announcement.

_Think of Pepper. I'm doing this for Pepper, to make people aware of her situation. _

"I would like to thank you all for coming. As many of you are now aware, my personal assistant, the wonderful Pepper Potts, is missing. I'm also aware that the rumors about her are spreading like wildfire, and I would like to take this opportunity to set the record straight. Miss Potts has not contracted the bubonic plague, and she certainly has not run away to Brazil to have my secret lovechild. The truth is…truth is, Pepper Potts is missing, and we suspect she's been kidnapped—"

The questions started flying at this statement. Tony didn't even have to raise a hand to silence them; the look on his face was enough.

"Any and all efforts towards helping me—us—find Pepper are greatly appreciated. If you think you know anything, please contact the police immediately. Pepper means a great deal to me, and to a lot of us, and your help and support would be very, very appreciated. Stark Industries has given use of all relevant technology to the police to help in their investigation. I'm going to turn this over to Detective O'Shea, who is the lead on Miss Potts's case—"

"Um, excuse me," a perky, blonde Christine Everhart piped up. "How can you be sure that Miss Potts didn't simply—"

"I know where you're going to try to go with this, Miss Everhart, and I suggest that you stop now. Despite what you may believe, I have more important things to do than deal with your petty grievance against my assistant and myself. I'm talking about Pepper's life. Anything you have to say pales in comparison," Tony said, his voice leaving no room argument. Christine Everhart sat still as a stone, her eyes wide.

"As I was saying, I'm going to turn this over to Detective O'Shea, who is the lead investigator on Pepper's case," Tony said, gesturing to O'Shea, who quickly relieved Tony at the podium. Tony made a beeline for the comfort and solitude of his office as O'Shea finished up the press conference.

* * *

When Pepper came to, she incredibly disoriented. She had been drifting in and out of consciousness for quite some time, or so she thought. The 'in and out' made it hard to keep track to time. It was very, very possible that she had been here for days, or weeks. She had no idea, and she hated that. Not knowing was worse than anything else.

_Not worse than being away from Tony._

All she knew was that she was actually warm and in her bedroom. It seemed too small, like the ceiling was sagging towards her

She also realized that the reason she was so cold was because she was only wearing her white button down, bra and panties. Her suit was gone.

_He took your armor, Pepper, but you have to stay strong You know all this…the claustrophobia…it's in your head He drugged you, remember Stay calm, and don't give in to fear Fear and despair are very much the same thing and you don't give in to despair, remember?_

Tony wore an armor of gold-titanium alloy. Pepper's suits were her armor. She put them on the in morning and it made her 'the famous Pepper Potts,' ready to deal with any and all crises that could arise. Without her suit, she felt more vulnerable, more like an abandoned child than a grown and very capable woman. In this place, anyway. It was as if she had fallen down a steel and concrete rabbit hole.

Her thoughts were flying about in her head, and she was having trouble holding on to them. It was like thinking in run-on sentences, and it left a buzzing her head that she found very, very unpleasant. Because of her distraction with her racing thoughts, it took her several moments to notice the man in the corner. It took her several minutes to realize who he was. Her mind kept wanting her to believe that it was Tony, and she was wanting it to_ be_ Tony with all her heart. Instead, it was Derrick. Derrick was like a cheap, knock-off version of Tony Stark. Like the faux Pradas she had bought back in her naïve college days that looked good but pinched her toes.

_He's considerably more dangerous than a pair of toe-pinching Pradas Pepper don't forget that. _

"How long was I out?" Pepper asked, her voice betraying more of her fear than she had meant it to. Derrick seemed pleased by her fear. His reaction really didn't surprise her.

"After I gave you the drugs? Three days. Although an hour ago you were awake enough to eat some more…apparently you don't remember," he answered, his voice pleased. Pepper was confused. She didn't remember eating…No drug did that…not with one dosage.

"What did you give me?"

"It's an experimental drug we invented for private use by Mr. Stane. We like to call it 'Alice.'"

"Alice?"

"You know, the one who had adventures in Wonderland?"

Pepper tried to order her thoughts, but it was all scrambled in her head. It was like suddenly her brain wouldn't cooperate. She was telling herself to stop and focus and think about what the name 'Alice' implied, but she couldn't seem to slow her thoughts down fast enough to hold on to one of them.

_Alice fell down the rabbit whole does Tony know about his drug she wore a blue dress and a white apron where did he put my clothes we feel too big for this room there was a white rabbit in the story Derrick isn't Tony and a smiling cat developed it for Obadiah Derrick smiles like the cat my head is so busy there were Tweedle twins and I miss my desk and there were large cups of tea and I love Tony_

"I love Tony," she whispered to herself. "I love Tony. I love Tony."

_That's important I love Tony sagging ceiling hang on to Tony cold floor why's that important march hare say it remember it Tony Alice went through the looking glass I love Tony Lewis Carroll was strange why does it matter don't betray the ones you love Tony is love…_

"What was that, sweetheart?" Derrick asked, unable to understand Pepper's muttering.

"I love Tony. I love Tony," she kept repeating, quietly to herself so that Derrick couldn't hear.

_Drugs are messing with my head can't let him hear about love why Alice I love Tony Derrick can't hear it's too good for him Alice might be about drugs no Alice is a drug focus Pepper…_

"Starting to feel it, are we? It makes everything a little bit…frantic. A bit like the white rabbit, always going here and there. It works wonders on a stubborn patient like you," Derrick gloated.

They had named the drug Alice because of the hallucinogenic properties. In each of the patients, they had seemed to experience the room getting smaller, or them getting bigger, like Alice in the story. This brought on great fear. Eventually, that "phase" seemed to wear off, and left behind only the fear. And fear was key to breaking Pepper Potts…especially when he knew exactly how to do so.

The battle continued to rage in Pepper's head. She knew that she must not betray Tony, but there was so much chaos in her head, and the room seemed so small…it was hard not to blurt out everything going on in her head. She was in pain and terrified and wishing that Tony would come along to save her. There was some anger in there, too, because she didn't like feeling helpless, much less actually being helpless.

_Fight Derrick love Tony not helpless room small no it's the drugs Tony will save you focus Pepper Derrick is bad pain is bad Derrick is pain Tony is love fight Derrick get to Tony have to escape beat Derrick trick Derrick…_

Fear makes people do strange things. There are all those stories of mothers who lift cars off their children or men who hold their breath for three and a half minutes to rescue their wives. Fear made Pepper brave, and it granted her a brief moment of clarity. Despite the pain, she sat up in the bed stared at Derrick for a minute.

"Pepper, I know that all your thoughts are really hard to hold on to. If you say them out loud, it will be easier, I promise."

His speaking sent her over the edge. She knew that he was going to hurt her, and her fear of pain made her very eager to avoid it. Suddenly, her pain was very minimal. She smiled at him sweetly and beckoned him to her. Thinking that she had finally cracked, Derrick did so. She reached over to the bedside table and opened the drawer.

"What are you doing?" Derrick asked suspiciously.

"Write everything down so you remember it's a lot hard to remember," she said, her voice echoing the pattern of her thoughts. Derrick smiled and nodded. There was a pen and a notebook in the side drawer, just as there would be at her home. However, instead of pulling the pen and paper from the drawer, Pepper yanked the entire drawer out of place and swung it as hard as she could at him. There was a crack as the drawer broke, and Derrick dropped over, unconscious.

_Knocked out Derrick you should run, Pepper get away this is a warehouse full of Stark technology does Tony know about this get away, Pepper_ _find a door and get outside find someone to call for help ignore the pain and get out of here…_

_ Drugs are in your system they'll get out get out of your body food gets out your body blood gets out your body Tony should be in Derrick should stay away drugs need to be out get them out…_

In a brief moment of clarity, Pepper jammed her finger down her throat and regurgitated the food she had apparently eaten an hour ago. This would keep his newest round of drugs out of her system, which meant that she could be herself again soon. If only she could just go to back to sleep and sleep through the worst of it. But that was not an option right now.

_Can't go back to sleep you're free you can't sleep don't despair don't go back to sleep white rabbit will take you to wonderland don't want to go to wonderland Tony will come down the rabbit hole to save you but you can climb out on your own…_

Pepper rose from the bed, trying not give in to the pain in her body. She tried to keep her breathing steady, and tried to keep the pressure off of her leg, but she couldn't do so without overcompensating and falling over. For the first time, she was grateful that she didn't have her shoes on. She hobbled through the warehouse, searching for a door to the outside. Her head was pounding and the room seemed to be spinning. She wasn't sure how long she was going to be able to stay awake, and she desperately wanted her freedom.

_Hang in there Pepper get to the outside set off the alarm don't give into the darkness keep going you're too strong to go back to sleep be strong like Tony he escaped you can do be like Tony get away floor bad door! Get to door to freedom door is freedom…_

She pushed open the door to the outside and breathed her first breath of fresh air since she had been kidnapped. It was wonderful, better than she had ever imagined it would be, especially considering LA's smog problem. As painful as it was, she breathed deep, glad to have a taste of freedom.

The coolness of metal on her feet drew her attention downwards to her feet. She was standing on a platform of metal grating, two stories up. A fire escape. It had never really occurred to Pepper that warehouses would have fire escapes, but it seemed something too trivial to bother with now that she was free.

_Get down those stairs and to a phone call for help freedom makes me want to dance and shout need to call for help first though._

Half a flight of stairs had never seemed like such a big deal before, but Pepper was feeling the effects of the Alice drug. By the time she got to the first landing, her strength was gone. Her thoughts kept contradicting themselves; part of her desperately wanted to continue. The other half of her knew that she was losing her battle with Alice and was going to have to stop. Before she could make up her mind, her knees buckled and she slid to the floor of the fire escape.

"Help! Please! Please help…" she managed before Alice pulled her back into wonderland.

* * *

**Author's Note: **I simply couldn't resist having Tony take a jab at Christine Everhart...she's so fun to hate. Anyway, let me know what you think, and definitely have a Merry Christmas.


	6. Warehouse 12

**Author's Note:** Once again, thanks to everyone who read and reviewed. It is always wonderful to have feedback of any kind. And knowing that people are actually reading this is also pretty nice. I hope everyone had a great Christmas, and I hope that you enjoy this chapter. Read and Review. Thanks!

* * *

Every night since Pepper had been gone Tony had flown over the streets of LA, looking for her. There was still no sign of her. The police were trying to track down David Lane, but were having no luck. Things looked very bleak, and Tony wasn't really certain that his heart could take it.

Rhodey stopped by every now and again to make sure he was taking decent care of himself, which was a good thing, because Tony definitely wasn't. He ate only when Rhodey stopped by and made him eat. He couldn't sleep until he was completely and totally exhausted, and then only in Pepper's room. Rhodey had gotten him some sleeping pills, but he had been banned from the premises before he could give them to Tony.

"Tony," he had said, "you can't just stop everything. You have to keep the company running. Pepper would not want you to—"

"Don't tell me what she would want! She should be here to tell me that herself. She would want to tell me herself, Rhodey."

"I know that, but she wouldn't want you to let everything go to hell. You've missed every meeting you had this week. Meetings that she worked hard to schedule—"

"I know this, Rhodey. I'll go to the ones that are scheduled from now on, alright. Just leave me the hell alone."

"What are you going to do when you get to the ends of the plans she had scheduled, huh?"

"I won't. I'm going to find her before then," Tony had answered simply.

"Tony, I think that maybe you should consider—"

"Don't. Finish. That. Sentence," Tony had commanded, his voice cold.

"I'm just—"

"I don't care. I am not going to accept that as a possibility, okay? Pepper will be coming back."

"Okay, fine. Pepper will be coming back, but until then, maybe you should consider a temp secretary," Rhodey had suggested. The words had not been out of his mouth for a second when Tony's fist appeared out of no where and made contact with the side of his face. Hard.

"How _dare_ you suggest that Pepper could ever be _replaced _by a _temp girl_! Pepper is more than just a secretary, and you know it. No one will ever be able to _replace_ her. Now get the hell out of my house."

Rhodey had known better than to push the issue. He quickly left the house, but not before putting the sleeping pills on the cabinet and informing Jarvis that they were there. He knew that Tony was going through a tough time. Hell, he was going through a tough time without Pepper, but he also knew that he could never miss her or hurt for her like Tony did.

Tony was pulled from his reverie by Jarvis's voice.

"Sir, it appears that detective O'Shea is at the front gate, along with a mob of the press. Shall I let him in?"

Tony's heart began racing with a mixture of fear and excitement. Tony told himself that it had to be good news. He was willing it all to be good news.

"Yes, Jarvis, allow the detective through. Also, run interference to scramble the press's cameras," Tony said with a wicked smile.

"Will do, sir."

_It has to be good news. It has to be. Pepper is too strong and good and reliable to leave me here alone. He has to have good news._

O'Shea knocked on the front door and Tony quickly pulled it open for him, welcoming the detective into his home. It was the first time that O'Shea had ever seen the inside of the Stark estate, and it was enough to overwhelm anyone. He stood dumbfounded for a moment before he followed Tony into the kitchen.

"Can I get you anything?" Tony asked.

"No, I'm good, thanks."

"Sir," Jarvis interrupted, "I'm detecting the presence of a firearm in the house on the person of Detective O'Shea—"

"Christ! What is that?" O'Shea said, almost jumping out of his skin.

Tony couldn't help but smile. "That's Jarvis. He's an AI that helps Pepper run the house."

"He can pick up on things like that?"

"Yes, he can. He's very good. Now, you didn't drive all the way out here to talk about my AI. What's going on with Pepper's case?" Tony asked.

"We've had a lot of tips come in, but none of them have panned out. I think a lot of them are vultures hoping they'll be right and that you'll offer them a reward—"

"Do you think that would help?"

"Probably not. These people aren't after money, or you would have already gotten a ransom note. Can you think of anything else that they could get from kidnapping Miss Potts?"

"She knows everything I know about the company. Hell, she practically runs it half the time when I'm off elsewhere. Maybe they wanted information?" Tony thought aloud.

"Have you noticed any flaws in, say, cash flow since she went missing?"

"No. Jarvis alerts me if anything goes weird with the accounting. The stock has dropped because people think I can't do my job without her—"

"You're not exactly trying to prove them wrong. Your missing those board meetings made headline news."

"I know. Starting tomorrow, I'm back on the schedule that Pepper had prepared for me, which includes a meeting with the Research and Development department…" Tony trailed off as the cogs in his mind started turning at high speed. "R&D. The two guys, Gregory and David Lane, were security guards, and they always worked in the R&D department."

"Yeah." O'Shea thought it best to try and follow Tony's train of thought. The man was, after all, a certified genius.

"They've been missing from work since the day before Pepper was taken, right?"

"Yeah."

"I don't know about you, but I've been operating under the assumption that these guys were working by themselves, just the two of them."

"We hadn't ruled out there being others involved, we just don't have the evidence to back up that idea," O'Shea said.

"We're talking about two security guards with mile long rap sheets. Stark Industries doesn't hire people with criminal records. When were they hired? Jarvis, find out when the Benson brothers were hired," Tony commanded.

"Yes, sir."

"You're obviously thinking that there is someone else involved here," O'Shea said, trying to catch up with Tony.

"Yeah. Since the now infamous "I am Iron Man" press conference, we've run facial recognition programs on the people we hire to keep things like what happened with the Lanes from happening. Cons looking to infiltrate the company will apply for jobs with false identities, but they can't change their face, right? So you run their picture through the criminal databases to make sure that they're clean—"

"Isn't that a complete disregard for their right to privacy?"

"People run background checks all the time. We're just doing it with a photo instead of a name. Well, we use the name, too. But—"

"Sir, it appears that the Benson brothers were hired two weeks after Stark Industries began using their facial recognition programs in the hiring process," Jarvis informed him.

"They have to have someone helping them out. Otherwise, they never could have been hired," Tony said. His mind was running a million miles per hour. A million light-years per hour is probably a better estimate. Things were starting to fall into place. "Jarvis, find out who else in the R&D department has been missing since the day before Pepper was taken."

"Yes, sir."

"You think they're working with someone in your R&D department on this?" O'Shea asked.

"Yeah. There's probably someone else higher-up in on it, too, because that's the only way they could have gotten around the background check. Shit! I've got traitors all in my company. Fuck! Damn it all!"

_Stay calm. My first priority is finding Pepper. Then, I can sort through all this other mess, and she'll be here to help me. _

"Assuming that she's still ali—" O'Shea started.

"Don't finish that sentence. She is alive."

"Right. They would need somewhere secure to keep her, and probably someplace they know very well," O'Shea said. "I've already been by both their apartments, their mother's house, and their girlfriends' houses. Can you think of anywhere—"

"Sir? Search is complete. Dr. Derrick James, a junior researcher in the Research and Development department has been missing since the day Miss Potts disappeared," Jarvis interrupted again.

"Thank you, Jarvis," Tony said with a triumphant smile.

"They would need somewhere secure and secluded. Ringing any bells?"

Suddenly, Tony knew exactly where she was. After the fight with Obadiah, Tony had found several secret warehouses that had been used to store some of the illegally developed weapons that Obadiah had been selling under the table. They were bought for Stark Industries, and would have been very, very secure. Since they were used for research and development, these guys would have access to them. It all made perfect sense. That had to be where they were keeping her.

"Jarvis, this is my last favor tonight, I swear," Tony said. "I need you to find out which of those research and development warehouses that we shutdown have been accessed recently, specifically since Pepper was kidnapped."

It didn't take Jarvis very long to find out, probably because their were only a few warehouses. "It would appear that Research and Development warehouse number 12 has been very recently accessed, sir."

"Thank you, Jarvis."

O'Shea was completely and totally dumbfounded. He had just sat back and watched Tony Stark solve his case for him. As much of a relief as it was to have a lead to follow, it was somewhat disheartening to see someone with no detective experience do his job better than him. Oh well, he thought, he does know his company better than you do.

"Alright, let's go. Call in the cavalry, and let's go get her," Tony said, throwing off his jacket and heading to the garage.

"Whoa! You wanna tell me what's going on here? Because I'm only following you to a certain point."

"Look…long story short, Obadiah Stane was selling weapons under the table to terrorists. He had people developing weapons on the side for him, apparently. I found three warehouses completely devoted to things that he had developed just for selling under the table. I just hadn't had a chance to deal with all of that yet, so the warehouses haven't been touched since I found them. I'm willing to bet my life savings that that's where they're holding Pepper," Tony explained quickly, still moving the entire time. S.H.I.E.L.D. was going to kick his ass for revealing all that...oh, well. Too bad. It was Pepper, and she was damn well worth it.

It took O'Shea just a second to absorb everything that Tony told him, but as soon as he had, he was following closely behind. As he moved, he pulled out his phone and called Bryant, who answered on the first ring.

"Bryant."

"Bryant, its O'Shea. I think I know where Pepper Potts is, and I need you to send me SWAT team and ambulance to the location I'm about to text to you. Got it?" O'Shea said with no intro.

"Yeah. I can do that."

"Right. Good. I'll also need you to put out an APB on Dr. Derrick James. He's also wanted for questioning."

"Okay. Send me that address and I'll see you there."

"Thanks." O'Shea's quickly sent him the address and headed to his car. He saw a red and gold streak fly above the car and realized that Tony was not going to wait on him. He quickly plugged the address to the warehouse into his GPS and took off.

* * *

Pepper was groggy and cold when she woke up. It was light outside, and she smiled, feeling the sun on her face for the first time in…days? Weeks? She was thinking it was probably days. She hadn't drastically lost weight, and she had only eaten once since she had been kidnapped. That led her to think that 'days' was a pretty good estimate. It was still longer than she ever wanted to go without eating ever again. Of course, she was mostly hoping to never be kidnapped and tortured again, either.

Her mind was whirling, and thankfully, she was able to hang on to her thoughts, now. She was still very groggy, but her mind wasn't buzzing with thoughts that she couldn't organize, and for that she was very grateful.

_Pepper, you're not wearing any pants. You should get pants. And help. Help should come before the pants. Help is probably at the bottom of those stairs. It's only twenty or so steps. No big deal. You can make it down a few steps. _

She was not a fan of the feel of metal grating on her posterior. It was cold and a little sharp, and definitely not meant to be sat on. However, she was so happy to be in the open and away from Derrick that she couldn't really bring herself to complain about the grating. After all, the grating wasn't going to pull her nails out any time soon.

After a quick scoot to the edge of the landing, she pulled herself up by the hand rail on the steps. Her hands were going to ache even more by the time she got to the bottom of the steps, she knew. The hand rails became her crutches as she tried to keep as much weight as possible off of her ankle, which was swollen to easily twice its normal size and was a variety of colors ranging from black to deep purple to blue.

Because it was hard to take deep breaths, it was a very slow going process, and it took her a ridiculously long time to get down those steps. Just as her foot hit the bottom step, she heard a door slam above her. Two stories up, David Lane and Derrick James were standing on the fire escape that she had used to get away the night before. She was deathly quiet, hoping that they wouldn't see her and go back inside. No such luck.

_You have red hair, Pepper, of course they would see you…it's like a beacon. Not to mention, the huge guy is definitely thinking you've killed his brother…you should run now._

"There she is. Go!" Derrick said to his accomplice.

Lane started thundering down the steps, taking them two at a time. Pepper froze for a split second before she started moving as fast as her broken body would possibly let her, screaming as she did so. Hopefully, someone would hear the noise and call the police. Derrick just stood on the fire escape, watching as Pepper tried to escape.

Despite moving as fast as she possibly could, she still wasn't going very fast. It was like the case of the tortoise and the hare…except that Pepper didn't seem to be winning the race at all. The hare was going to catch the tortoise and she didn't want to think about what he would do when he did.

_Don't think about it, just run. Run and make noise. Someone will hear all that racket and call the police. Just focus on running. Yes, it hurts, but you have to try to keep going. Tony escaped from a cave with an electromagnet in his chest…you are perfectly capable of getting to a main road and flagging down a car. Run. Run faster._

Then she was falling. Well, it felt more like flying. She was flying in a very downward direction, pushed from behind by David Lane. He was stronger than Derrick, Pepper could tell already, and that seemed like a very bad sign. She scrambled to her feet and turned to face him. The look on his face was enough to frighten even the bravest of people. It was something that Pepper had never seen before. It was pure, unadulterated rage.

She saw his fist coming, but didn't quite manage to dodge it. She moved, and glanced off her ribs, which, while it still hurt immensely, was not as bad as it could have been. It could have hit her in the stomach, and she would have dropped like a stone. Her main concern was staying on her feet and getting help.

"I told you she was stronger than she looked, but you didn't believe me. 'Her strength is in her _mind_,' you said. I should have known better than to trust someone else to do this the right way. Brute force is always the best way to go," he said, yelling back over his shoulder to Derrick, who was just now coming down the fire escape.

"And it is. Physically, she's no match for you, David. But she just withstood a week of torture. You've yet to display any type of control over your emotions," Derrick answered.

All during the exchange, Pepper scrambled to put more space between her and her attacker, but a broken ankle really wasn't conducive to quick movement. She stumbled and fell, but continued to try to move as fast and as far from him as possible. It wasn't working as well as she would have liked.

"Help! Please! Help! My name is Pepper Potts and I've been kidna—"

Her call for help was cut short when David covered her mouth with one of his enormous hands. She bit him, and his blood filled her mouth. He threw her to the ground as he yelled in pain. She started crawling away, her knees scraping on the pavement.

"Help! Please, anyone!"

"Shut up! We're in a warehouse district. No one is going to hear you. Not much longer, anyway. You killed my brother and I just—"

"I didn't kill anyone! I don't know what you're talking about! Help!" Pepper continued to scream.

"You did. You and those ridiculous shoes that you women are wearing these days. Put your heel right through his throat. He bled out all over your apartment," David said as he stepped on her broken ankle. As she screamed, he smiled.

_You felt something give under your foot when you…and there was blood that wasn't yours…but killed him? That just doesn't seem possible. _

"Maybe if you hadn't been trying to kidnap me, that wouldn't have happened!" she yelled at him, still hoping that someone would hear their conversation.

_Not the smartest thing to say, Pepper._

"Besides, you still don't have the information you're looking for," she said, trying to buy herself some more time.

"She has a point. Take her back inside," Derrick commanded, approaching them.

"To hell with the information. You had your chance to get that from her, and you failed miserably. Now I'm going to do my job, and clean up this mess," David spat.

"You'll do no such thing," Derrick said, pulling a gun from the waistband of his pants. He aimed it squarely at David. "Take her back inside. I'm not finished."

Pepper heard a noise in the distance, almost like a plane, but higher pitched. It was all too familiar. She had spent too many sleepless nights waiting to hear that sound so that she would know that Tony returned safely from yet another mission. She smiled.

"What are you smiling for? Seein' that light at the end of the tunnel?" David asked with a sharp kick to her kidney.

"You hear that sound?" she gasped. "That's the sound of Tony Stark coming to kick your ass."

"Yeah? I don't think so. He'll be too distracted by his dead secretary—"

"Personal assistant!"

_You're getting beaten, and you're worried about terminology? You really have taken one too many blows to the head._

"Doesn't matter. You'll still be dead."

"No, she won't! Now take her inside!" Derrick yelled, his hands shaking as he still held the gun on David. David shook his head vehemently. There was a deafening bang, and David was lying dead on the concrete beside her, a single bullet right between the eyes. Pepper screamed.

"Now, Miss Potts, you're going to have to come inside with me, right now," Derrick said, training the gun on her.

"You think that I'm going to willingly go back with you? You're crazier than I thought."

"As you can see, I'm not afraid to use this thing. Now get up and back inside!"

"It's what? A quick death here or a slow one inside? Hell no. I'm not going anywhere. Besides, I wasn't kidding when I said that Tony would be here any minute."

_ Tony's coming. Hear him? Stall for just a moment longer, and he'll find you. He'll find you and take you to get all patched up. _

Pepper felt blood trickling from one of the cuts in her face. She was quite sure that they would scar, and she really wasn't very happy about it.

_That's more like it Pepper. Be angry about it. Stay awake to make them regret scarring your face. Hold on to that anger and use it to get those bastards who betrayed Tony. Fuckers…_

Inspired by her anger, Pepper reached up and began banging on the dumpster beside her, hoping to attract Tony's attention with the noise. Derrick yelled at her, trying to make her stop, waving the gun around like a maniac the entire time. She could see Tony coming, the sun glinting off his armor. There was a loud crash as he hit the pavement about three yards in front of where she and Derrick were. Derrick immediately turned towards him, pointing the gun at Tony.

_Idiot…gun's not going to do any good against Iron Man…_she thought as she leaned against a dumpster to watch Derrick get his ass thoroughly kicked. The idiot quickly fired the remaining rounds in his gun. There were several loud pops, followed by several loud pings as the bullets ricocheted off of Tony's suit.

Pepper felt a sharp pain in her chest, and she cried out. Her cry caught Tony's attention, and he froze for a moment, staring at her. She looked down and noticed a small, red-rimmed hole in her blouse. Curious, she touched a finger to the hole and pulled away a bloody finger.

_What happened? How did…God, it hurts…Tony's here. He'll make it better. It's going to be okay…pain…ugh…stay awake, Pepper. Stay awake. Be happy...Tony's here. He came for you...pain...  


* * *

_Tony had heard Pepper scream. It wasn't a scream of fear, but pain. He saw the bullet hole in her side, and the blood that was slowly trickling down her side, staining her shirt. His blood ran cold. He was absolutely horrified by what he saw. Pepper, his Pepper, was bruised and bleeding. Her face was a swollen mass of bruises and cuts, several of which were oozing blood. She was gasping for breath, or maybe in pain. He suspected it was a bit of both. Well, a lot of the pain, and some gasping for breath. Somehow, despite her pain, she looked confused rather than scared.

"Jarvis, how bad do you think…"

"She appears to have been shot, there is lots of bruising, some broken bones, and her fingernails are missing."

He was pulled from his thoughts by yet another _ping_. Apparently, Derrick had just one more bullet left in his gun. Not that it mattered. Tony stared at him and watched as Derrick continued to pull the trigger, only to hear the _click_ of an empty magazine.

"You son of a bitch…" Tony spat. He pulled up his face plate, showing Derrick his face. If Derrick hadn't been afraid before, he was now. The world had never seen an angrier man than Tony Stark was at that moment. All reason was gone, and the only thoughts that he entertained were ones that involved tearing Derrick James to shreds. He took three strides towards the scientist, who backed away in fear, but was stopped when he backed into a brick wall.

"You hurt Pepper," Tony growled, his voice full of rage.

"They—they made me. We had to know—"

"I don't care, you stupid fuck. You hurt her."

"They were going to kill me—" Derrick stammered.

"Oh? Well, you should have let them, because it would have been far more merciful than what I have in mind," Tony spat. He grabbed Derrick's hand, and one by one wrenched his fingers in directions that fingers simply are not meant to go. There was a satisfying crack and Derrick shrieked.

"Please don't—"

"I'll show you all the mercy that you showed her!" Tony pulled him away from the wall and slammed him back into it several times. Derrick continued screaming and fell to the ground with a dull thud. Tony brought his foot down on Derrick's ankle, hard. There was a sickening crunch, and Derrick's screaming stopped. He had lost consciousness. Tony stood there, staring down at him for a time until he heard Pepper call him.

"Tony…I knew you'd find me," she said, her voice hoarse. Tony quickly went to her and crouched by her side.

"I'm here. Help is coming. An ambulance is coming. They'll take you to the hospital and fix you right up, okay?" he said, trying his best to comfort her, despite the fact that he was panicking inside.

"Yeah…They've developed a drug…Alice…" Speaking was getting more and more difficult as the pressure continued to build in her chest.

"Alice? Is that someone who…did she hurt you?"

"No…Alice is a drug…Derrick hurt me…" Her eyes were unfocused, and he could tell that she wasn't really seeing him anymore. She was looking, but not seeing. He took her hand in his suited one, and she gasped in pain. He quickly glanced down, only to find the mess that they had made of her hands.

_Her hands…that son of a bitch tore out her fingernails and broke some of her fingers. He tortured her…he didn't just beat her, he tortured her. When he wakes up, I'm going to tear his heart out, but only after I've ripped his fingernails and split his tongue…_

"Tony? I can't…my chest hurts…and it's really hard to breathe…"

"Just hang in there, okay? Look, there's the ambulance. It's coming around the corner right now. I just need you to stay awake as long as you can, okay? Can you do that for me?" he said, pointing to the ambulance that was coming down towards them, followed by a swarm of cop cars and the SWAT vehicle.

"Yes…how much longer…it hurts…"

Tony could see that she was about to pass out, but he didn't really know what to do to keep her awake, or if there was anything he could do at all. There was so much damage, he didn't want to touch her while he was in the suit, for fear of hurting her. His attempt at holding her hand was bad enough, but he wasn't about to hurt her anymore than she already was.

"Pepper, look at me. Look at me. I need you to stay awake. Talk to me if that helps. I know it hurts, it looks like it hurts pretty bad, but the ambulance is here. It's going to be okay. I'm not going to let anyone hurt you again, I swear, okay?"

"I…need my pants…"

"They'll get you a gown at the hospital, how's that? A nice hospital green. I think pants are out of the question for a while though." Seeing that Pepper was fading fast, he shouted to the EMTs, who couldn't seem to move fast enough. "Hurry! Hurry!" Upon hearing Tony's shouts, they began to move faster. "Pepper, can you tell me what they wanted?"

"Shipping orders…they wanted to know…where it was going…" Tony frowned. He had been right. Someone in the higher ups was in on all of this, and he was going to have to find out who the hell it was. But not right now. Right now, he had to take care of Pepper. He, with great care, reached out and stroked her hair. She jerked away violently, and his frown deepened.

_What did he do to her? She's withdrawing from even the gentlest of contact…I guess it could be the pain. I don't know how gentle I'm actually being with the suit and all…but when Derrick wakes up, I'm going to take that stupid fucker and tear him limb from limb. He will be completely unrecognizable by the time I finally decide to let him die. She's crying…he made her cry…_

Pepper was crying, and Tony knew that his heart was broken. Seeing her cry was one of the worst things he had ever seen. He didn't know what to do to make it better, and so he was helpless to do anything but talk to her. That was one thing he could do. He could talk to her.

"Pepper, don't be sad. Everything is going to be fine. They're going to take care of you, and you're going to be okay. There's no need to be sad—"

"Not…sad…you came for me…" she said, a faint smile on her face. He studied her face for a moment. Even though she was bloody and bruised and obviously scared, he could also tell that she wasn't lying to him. She was blissfully happy with the knowledge that he had found and come for her. Tony smiled back.

"Of course I came for you. I couldn't just leave you here. You're the…I'm not going to let anything happen to you ever again, I promise. It's going to be fine," he said, trying to reassure himself as much as he was trying to reassure her. Her breathing was heavy and labored and wet. She was bleeding and broken, but at least she was awake. And the paramedics were there. That was good.

"Sir, you're going to have to move so that we can help her," one of the EMTs said politely. Tony quickly moved out of the way so that they could better examine her. He didn't understand a lot of the medical jargon, but he did catch "punctured lung" and "head trauma." Neither of those sat very well with Tony Stark.

He stayed as close as he could as they put her in a neck brace and loaded her on to a stretcher. Tony wanted to ride in the ambulance with her more than he had ever wanted anything in his life, but the suit was too bulky and heavy to cram into an ambulance, and he definitely didn't want to interfere with the people trying to save Pepper's life. It hurt his soul to see her like that, and to be completely unable to help her.

_I can punish the guy that did this. And find the people who are responsible. Derrick was just the beginning. I'll find them all. That's how I can help her. I can make sure that this will never happen again. _

"Where are you taking her?" he asked quickly, before the ambulance could drive away.

"Cedars-Sinai. Her breath sounds are…she probably has a punctured lung, which means that she's going straight into surgery."

"Thank you."

He knew that he wouldn't be welcome in a hospital in is heavy gold-titanium suit, so he headed home to change so that he could be there for her when the doctor came to give him good news about her surgery. Because it would be good news. Pepper had fought too hard to survive everything, and he had fought too hard to find her for her to die on an operating table. Her strength and his willpower seemed to have gotten them through this so far, and it would continue to do so. Pepper was going to be fine, and he was going to there to tell her so when she woke up.

* * *

**Author's Note:** Pepper has finally been rescued. Yay! I couldn't resist having it be a joint effort between Tony and Pepper, because that's exactly how they do things: together. He saved her, but she did her part, too. Anyway, review please! [I sound like a review-crazed monkey on crack. I apologize.] I hope you enjoyed it.


	7. Waiting

**Author's Note: **Thank you to everyone who read and reviewed the last chapter. That definitely made for a very Happy New Year for me. I hope you all had one, too, and I hope you enjoy the chapter. Please read and review!

* * *

As he flew back to the mansion, Tony's mind was moving at a million miles an hour. Try as he might, he couldn't get the image of Pepper bloody, gasping, and crying out of his mind. It hurt to remember her that way, but he also knew that they were going to have plenty of time to make more memories that didn't involve pain and suffering. They would have plenty of happy memories if he had his way. And the saying "you can't always get what you want" did not apply to Tony Stark.

In an attempt to take his mind off of things, he called Happy Hogan. Happy had been around as long as Pepper had, and he had always considered her a friend. He would want to know what was going on, and Tony knew that Pepper would want to see him when she awoke. Happy answered on the first ring.

"Happy Hogan."

"Hogan, it's Tony. I—we found Pepper."

"Where—Is—is she alright?" Happy managed after a moment of silence. There was so much that he wanted to ask, that it was all trying to pour out of him at once. He had to stop for a moment to organize his thoughts and ask the most important question first.

"The EMT said something about a—a punctured lung and head trauma. God, she got shot, Hogan. The bullet must have ricocheted off my suit…They wouldn't let me—I mean, I couldn't go with her in the ambulance because of the suit. It was too heavy to go in the ambulance and it would have gotten in the way."

"Do you know where they're taking her?"

"Cedars-Siani."

"Okay. I'll head over there now. I'm assuming that you'll be there soon?"

"As soon as I get out of the suit, I'm there."

"I'll see you when you get there."

"Thanks, Hogan. I'll see you in a few."

Tony hung up, and immediately thought of calling Rhodey. He knew that his best friend would not want to learn of the recent turn of events from the news, but he was also still incredibly sore at the fact that Rhodey had wanted to replace Pepper. The rational part of his mind knew that Rhodey hadn't been trying to replace Pepper as a person, but rather find someone to do her job, but the implication someone else could even do her job…it bothered him. But, he realized, Pepper would not want him holding a grudge over all this mess, so he called Rhodey.

"I was wondering when you were gonna call," Rhodey said by way of greeting.

"I found Pepper."

Rhodey was silent for a long moment, unsure of what to say. Like Happy, he had so many questions to ask that he wasn't sure which ones to ask first. His biggest concern was for Pepper's safety, so he started there.

"How is she?"

"They're taking her to Cedars-Siani. She got shot, Rhodey—"

"Shot?"

"He had a gun, and he was shooting at me…the bullet must have ricocheted off the suit and hit her. I don't really know everything that was wrong, but the paramedic said that she had a possible punctured lung. God, Rhodey, she looked so…they beat her, Rhodey. Her face was black and blue and bloody—"

"Whoa, Tony, calm down. The paramedics are going to take care of her, you know that. I'll meet you at the hospital—"

"Hogan will be there, too."

"Okay, well, I'll meet you two at the hospital and we can talk to the doctors—"

"They said she would be in surgery. They had a team waiting for her to get there."

"That's good. That means that they're ready to get in there and take care of things. They'll have her fixed faster than you can say 'Iron Man'," Rhodey said. He was trying to stay calm so that Tony wouldn't panic. If she had a punctured lung, there could be all other types of internal stuff going on, especially if it was a gunshot. They would just have to find out how bad it was when they got to the hospital. Until then, his main priority would be keeping Tony calm. "Where are you now?"

"I'm on my way back to the mansion. I have to get out of the suit before I can go to the hospital."

"Okay. Get out of the suit and I'll meet you at the hospital and then we'll go from there, okay?"

"Yeah. I'll see you then."

"Tony?"

"Yeah?"

"Don't worry. The doctors are good at their jobs, and Pepper is tough. After all, she's put up with you all these years."

"I know. I'll see you there." He hung up. For a moment, he held a breath before releasing it slowly. He had found Pepper. He knew that she was in serious condition, and that she wasn't out of the woods just yet. God, he shouldn't be worrying about Pepper like this. This isn't a problem that she should have. That should be him in the hospital. After all, he was the one that flew around getting shot at and hit by airplanes. He wondered if this was how she felt on all those nights that she had sat up waiting for him to return from one of his missions. He knew that she had been nervous, and he knew that she didn't enjoy patching him up, but the anxiety…not knowing whether she was going to live or die…it was awful. It was almost the worst thing that he had ever felt in his life. He hated himself for putting her through that.

_Guilt is not going to help her. I'm going to go home, get out of this armor, and go to the hospital to wait. She is going to be fine, and I'm going to be there to see her when she wakes up._

Tony wanted more than anything to just let the world fade away while he thought of all the moments that he and Pepper had shared. All the times that she had hustled him out of the house to a meeting, all the times that she had patched him up after he came home from a mission bruised and battered, all the times that she made sure he ate dinner when he had forgotten to feed himself...the moments that should have been kisses, the moments that should have been embraces, the moments when he should have looked into those beautiful blue eyes of hers and told her how much he loved her…but no, he wouldn't think of that now. It felt too much like goodbye.

Instead, he took the suit off of autopilot and focused on getting back to the mansion. He paid extra attention to the details of his flight and his surroundings. He had never noticed how small the Ferris wheel on the pier had seemed, or how low-lying the clouds were. He did, however, notice that the air was sweeter knowing that Pepper was away from that son of a bitch who had been torturing her.

Jesus, he had been torturing her. What kind of sick bastard could torture Pepper? Tony completely understood wanting to torture someone, because that is exactly what he wanted to do to Derrick. If he hadn't heard Pepper call his name, if she hadn't been hurt, he would have torn Derrick apart. As it was, Tony was hoping that Derrick would make bail, just so that he could tear out his fingernails just like he had done to Pepper. Ideas of medieval torture devices sprang to his mind. Derrick James's screaming would be music to his ears…

But Derrick had been working for someone else. Someone higher up. Pepper had said that he had wanted information on the shipping manifests he had signed the night she was taken…the only way Derrick could even know about those shipments was through someone on the board of directors…

_Jesus, I've got corruption up to my eyeballs. It has infested my company and I have to get it sorted out. Someone on the Board has to be involved, and damnit, I hate that. Everything seems to be tied to the R&D department…_

"No," he commanded himself. He knew that his thoughts were all over the place, and he hated it. He wanted to focus on anything except the fact that Pepper was in surgery, and it was making him a complete and utter mess. He was just going to have to take things one at a time, and that first meant getting back home. He was only two minutes out, so he concentrated on his landing.

The minute the 'bots had him out of his suit, he was headed upstairs to his bedroom, stripping along the way. He had never moved with such purpose as he did now. Normally, if he was going out in public, he made sure that he looked sharp. _Fuck that_, he thought. He had to get to the hospital as quickly as possible. Never mind the damned paparazzi that were going to be hanging about like vultures and taking pictures of him in grease-stained jeans. Never mind that the tabloid covers would, once again, question his sanity. He threw all those worries to the wind as he dressed in what was easiest for him: a t-shirt, jeans, and a leather jacket. He grabbed his keys off his desk and was gone within minutes. Even Jarvis's greeting was completely ignored.

Tony took the Audi, the least flashy of all his cars, for a reason. As much as he loved to drive the others, especially at ridiculously high speeds, he wasn't entirely sure that he could deal with a speeding ticket right now. Actually, he was completely sure that he wouldn't have the composure to deal with a speeding ticket right now.

Luckily, he managed to make it to the hospital with no major problems. But, as he predicted, there were swarms of reporters and photographers, if they even warranted that title, outside the hospital. They mobbed him as he tried to walk through the front doors, shouting their questions at the top of their obnoxious reporter lungs.

"Is it true that your secretary has been found?" "Is it true that she had disfiguring burns covering a third of her body?" "Can you give us any comment at all, Mr. Stark?" "Is it true that she tried to have a back alley abortion?" "I've heard she's in critical condition and not expected to live. Any comment?" "Is it true that she was caught in the middle of a drug trafficking ring and has been using Stark Industries as a front?" "I've heard that she tried to get an illegal…"

Tony tried to block out all the ridiculous questions that they were asking. _Pepper running a drug trafficking ring? Honestly, who comes up with this shit? And she sure as hell wouldn't be having a back alley abortion. God, what idiots. Besides, she's in the hospital. They should have a little respect. Nothing is sacred to these people. _ He pushed his way through the crowd, not stopping to pose for pictures like he normally would. Luckily, hospital security was keeping them outside, so they couldn't sneak in and get an 'inside scoop on Pepper Potts's mystery surgery."

The woman at the front desk directed him to a waiting room on the third floor. When he arrived, Rhodey was sitting in a chair, studying his own fidgeting hands. Happy stood solemnly beside him, he face blank. Tony wasn't sure what to make of the situation. Rhodey could be nervous because Pepper was in surgery, or maybe he was nervous because they had gotten bad news. No, it couldn't be bad news. It wasn't allowed.

"Have you heard anything yet?" Tony asked as he approached. Rhodey looked at him and shook his head, before standing to hug his friend. The last time they had hugged, had been when Rhodey found him in the middle of the desert in Afghanistan. Happy just put a comforting hand on his shoulder, which was enough. Tony would have been really worried if Happy started giving out hugs. That would mean something was very, very wrong.

"No news, yet, sir. But that could be a good thing. No news is certainly better than bad news," Happy said.

"Hell, anything is better than bad news," Tony snapped. "I'm sorry. That was—"

"Perfectly understandable, sir. Stress will do that to people."

"You know…the last time that I saw her, she had me sign these papers that gave me power of attorney. I can make medical decisions for her, Rhodey…in case she can't—"

"Tony, stop. If that happens, if you need to make decisions for her, we'll cross that bridge when we get there—"

"Jump off that bridge when I get there, is more like it."

"I'm serious. Stop that, right now. I know you're worried. We're all worried. But there's no need to borrow trouble. We're gonna sit tight and wait, and then deal with things, okay?"

Tony just nodded dumbly. He had managed to hold everything together for the past week, but he was crumbling now. Pepper's words from the Fireman's banquet rang in his ears. "_You know, I don't think you could last a week without me,"_ she had said. Well, she was right. He didn't know how she did it. She held him together week after week, year after year, and still managed to do the same for herself. God, she was a hell of a woman.

"When was the last time you ate?" Rhodey asked.

"Yesterday morning, I think," Tony answered before thinking.

"That's about what I figured. You've got to eat something, or you're going to crash. There's a cafeteria downstairs or a vending machine around the corner. Take your pick."

"I don't—If the doctor comes—"

"We'll wait for you. Now go."

Tony went in search of the vending machine. It really was just around the corner, and was filled with all sorts of snack foods and sugary candies, all guaranteed to give him a sugar rush. At least he would have something in his system. His stomach had been growling for the past few hours, but he hadn't really allowed it to be a concern. He pressed random buttons, not concerned with what he was buying, just ready to get back to the waiting room. He fished his snacks out of the machine and returned to the waiting room, where he tore into them like a ravenous animal. Rhodey just smiled.

After his two bags of skittles and three packs of crackers, Tony was jittery. He couldn't stand to just sit there, so he stood up and paced. Several passing nurses had stopped to ask him if everything was okay, and Rhodey waved them off before Tony could go into a rant about how not everything was okay when the woman he loved was having surgery to repair a punctured lung. Happy watched from the same place against the wall, worried about his boss and his co-worker.

When Rhodey finally got Tony to sit down, he was out like a light within minutes. He had ridden his sugar high, come off it, and crashed. Happy looked at Rhodey, who just smiled.

"You planned that," Happy said.

"God only knows when he last slept—"

"God and Jarvis."

"—and he needed the sleep. Besides, we can wake him up when the surgeon comes out to talk with us. I hardly think that Tony would want to find out that her surgery went well and then be too tired to stay awake to visit her," Rhodey answered with a smile. Happy smiled back and took a seat on the other side of his boss to wait.

* * *

There were blindingly brightly lights when Pepper opened her eyes. Everything was a little bit hazy, but she could see people in scrubs and masks over their faces standing above her. The pain was dulled at least, which was a welcome relief from her recent days. However, she still had no idea where she was, and she could feel the panic rising in her chest.

"Wher…where am I?" she asked, her words slurred. The people in surgical masks seemed surprised and froze for a moment.

"Get her back under, now. How did this happen?" The tone of the man's voice didn't do anything for calming the disoriented patient. She tried to look around some more, to get a better idea of things, but there were hard hands holding her still. Out of the corner of her eye, she could see someone put something in the IV that was going into her arm.

_No more drugs. Drugs are bad. Remember what the last drugs did to you? _

"No…I don't want drugs…no more drugs, please…"

People around her were swearing, and there was loud, fast beeping. A nurse was standing over her, trying to calm her by stroking her hair. Pepper jerked away violently, thinking for a split second that she was back in the warehouse with Derrick. "Calm down, we're going to take care of you…" The nurse's words became less and less audible as Pepper fell back into sleep.

* * *

There was a heavy hand on his shoulder, shaking him awake. They were being none too gentle about it, either. Tony groaned, and wiped the sleep from his eyes. Someone was talking to him, but the words were muffled in his ears. His neck ached from falling asleep with his chin tucked to his chest, and his stomach was growling once again.

"Tony, the doctor's here to talk to us. Wake up," Rhodey was saying. At the word 'doctor,' Tony perked right up. He stood and blinked a few times, trying to chase away the last remnants of sleep. The doctor was standing a few feet away, his face neutral. Happy and Rhodey stood waiting for him.

"What's going on? Is she okay?" Tony asked.

"She had some pretty extensive injuries. The bullet punctured her lung, and there was some internal bleeding. We managed to repair the damage to her lung and get the bleeding stopped, which is very good. There were some slight complications with the anesthetic—"

"What do you mean, 'complications'?" Tony demanded. Rhodey put a comforting hand on his friends shoulder.

"She was conscious towards the end of the surgery, when we were closing everything up. She was very disoriented, didn't know where she was, which is to be expected," the doctor explained, his voice calm.

"Could she feel any pain?" Tony asked, his voice full of anger at the idiot who couldn't even keep Pepper under long enough to do a life-saving surgery.

"No, she didn't feel any pain. She was only awake for a minute, but what concerns me, is that she didn't respond well to being comforted. One of our nurses tried to reassure her, tell her that everything was going to be alright, and stroked her hair. She reacted pretty violently. Luckily the anesthetic was already starting to work, but…that is a sign of some pretty intense psychological trauma."

"But she's going to be okay?" Tony asked again.

"Physically, she's going to be alright. We'll have to keep her here for a while, but she should make a full recovery. Her ankle is pretty severely broken, and she'll probably have to have surgery on it also, but it would seem that the worst of it, physically, is over. Patients who have been through what she appears to have been through usually have some pretty lasting psychological damage."

"Can I see her now?"

"She's in recovery. She won't be awake for a while yet, but you can go see her."

"Thank you," Rhodey said. Tony was already headed for the recovery ward, despite the fact that he had no idea where it was. Happy had the good sense to ask the doctor for directions before catching up with Tony and guiding him through the hospital to where Pepper was recuperating.

She looked so fragile; he had never thought of her that way before, and it was an odd word to associate with Pepper Potts. This was the woman who ran his life, who held him together through thick and thin. She wasn't fragile…except that she was. Today, she was, with her pale, bruised face. Ironically, her freckles were as prominent as ever, despite the purple bruises that marred her face. One of the larger gashes on her forehead had been glued shut, to reduce scarring.

And yet, somehow, despite it all, she could still take his breath away. He knew that underneath her gorgeous exterior was a mind like a steel trap and a heart of gold. She had the patience to put up with him day in and day out, and somehow still managed to be kind and gracious to those around her. It was the knowledge of Pepper the person, not just Pepper, the symbol of female power or Pepper, PA extraordinaire, that made him love her so much it hurt.

His hands were itching with the need to hold her hand, but they were both bandaged, and the broken fingers on her left hand were splinted. Her left hand, however, seemed to be in better shape. He pulled a chair up beside her bed and sat beside her, taking her left hand in his. Rhodey and Happy just stood at the foot of her bed, staring at their feet, the walls, anywhere but Tony and Pepper. Even though she was unconscious, it was a very intimate moment, and it seemed like an intrusion to watch him holding her hand.

"If you need me, I'll be sitting in the hallway," Happy whispered to Rhodey.

"I think I'll join you."

The two men slipped out the door quietly, leaving Tony sitting beside Pepper's bed, her hand cupped in his two larger ones. He gently kissed the back of her hand. He was so tired. The nap that he had taken earlier wasn't enough to push away the weariness that plagued him after days of not sleeping, but he didn't want to go to sleep. He had an irrational fear that if he fell asleep, he was going to wake up and Pepper would be gone. Instead of sleeping, he sat there, holding her hand and watching her sleep. Time became fluid, and hours seemed to pass in the blink of an eye. A nurse came to move her from the recovery ward into a private room, and Tony followed, unwilling to let go of her hand. It was as if it were a lifeline; if he let go, they would be lost. When she was settled in her room, he sat again in the chair beside her, still holding her hand. Rhodey and Happy eventually joined him, and together, they waited for her to awake.

* * *

When Pepper opened her eyes again, the light wasn't as bright as it had been. It was softer, and reddish. She blinked several times, trying to get her bearings. There was pain, but, again, graciously, it was dulled. Her hand was warm…someone was holding her hand, she realized. She looked, only to see a dark haired man, his head bowed, holding her hand.

_Derrick…it's Derrick…you have to get away from him…remember, fight Derrick…_

Panicked, she pulled her hand from his grasp quickly. Pain shot up her side, and she cried out. Before she could jerk about and hurt herself further, the man took both her wrists in his hands and held her still. The high pitched beeping that she heard earlier was there, and it was increasing.

"Pepper! Pepper! It's me, Tony. It's okay now. It's okay, stop fighting. I'm not going to hurt you."

Upon hearing his voice, she froze, her eyes locked on her lap. She slowly raised her head and studied the man in front of her. His eyes…they were tired, with dark circles beneath them. But they were also warm, and honest. There was no glint of ice or hatred in them, not for her…They were Tony's eyes.

"Tony?" she whispered. The beeping slowed.

"Yeah, it's me. You're safe now."

"Where am I?"

"You're at Cedars-Sinai. They patched you up pretty well."

"I remember…waking up earlier…there were doctors."

"You woke up during your surgery. It happens sometimes, but you're going to be okay…assuming you don't try to bust your stitches again," Tony said, trying to lighten the mood. He could tell that she was relaxing some more, but there was still a hint of fear in her eyes, and he didn't like it one bit. He didn't like that her first reaction to seeing him upon waking had been fear. Fear didn't look good on her.

"Bust my…stitches?" she asked, trying to get her breathing back under control. Heavy breathing was still very uncomfortable.

"You got shot. When I found you, Derrick—"

"Shot at you," she finished.

"Right. A bullet ricocheted and hit you. It punctured your lung. They did surgery to repair your lung…but you probably don't want to be moving around too much. It'll put a lot of strain on your stitches."

She studied his face, the concern for her obvious. He was concerned for her. Had he lost sleep over her disappearance? Was that why he looked so tired? And hurt…had she done this? Was she responsible for the hurt in his eyes? She looked down at her hands. Her finger tips had been bandaged and the fingers on her right hand splinted. She held her left hand out to him, her fingers brushing over the back of his. Her eyes asked the question and he took no time to answer. He took her hand in his again, and the world seemed a little bit brighter.

"What—what happened to Derrick?" She asked.

"He…I'm assuming he was picked up by the police. They got there when the ambulance did—"

"Miss Potts?" The doctor from earlier stuck his head in. "I'm Dr. Phair. It's good to see you awake. How are you feeling?"

"Considerably better than I felt when I showed up, that's for sure," she answered, her voice strong.

"That's not hard to imagine. You were in quite a state when you got here. You had a punctured lung and some internal bleeding, not to mention, six broken ribs, your fingers, and your ankle."

"Wow…that's quite the laundry list," she said, smiling.

"It is. We managed to get your lung and the bleeding taken care of earlier in surgery. Your fingers and such, also. Your ankle, however, is a different story."

"Okay. What do we do for the ankle? You can't just set it?"

"Well, your ankle is a relatively old break, in comparison to your others, and it has started to heal itself. What happened is, your ankle started healing itself, but since the bone was never set, it has started healing wrong," Dr. Phair explained.

"What do you do for that?" Tony asked.

"We can leave it alone, technically, but you would have a limp for the rest of your life. It might make walking in those stilettos that you seem to love a little more difficult. Or, we could do surgery to fix it. Basically, what we would do is go in, re-break the ankle, and then set it. It would be uncomfortable, obviously, but it wouldn't leave you with a limp. I'll give you some time to consider your options—"

"Go ahead and schedule the surgery," Pepper said. All the men in the room were taken aback by the abruptness of her response.

"Pepper, don't you want to think about all your options first. I mean, this would be another surgery so soon after this one," Tony said. Pepper glanced at him and smiled. It was a shadow of a smile, a sad, half-smile, before she answered the doctor.

"Please go ahead and schedule the surgery, doctor. I think I like my heels too much to give them up." The doctor nodded and left the room. Seeing that a serious discussion was about to ensue, Rhodey and Happy followed him out.

"Pepper, that's another surgery that you don't have to have—"

"Tony, I need to do this… I need you to trust me, okay?"

"Of course, I trust you. You're the most trustworthy person I know. I just worry—"

"Well don't, okay? Just know that I have to do this." Tony just nodded. Pepper was looking tired, and she looked drawn. She was paying careful attention to her breathing, which tipped him off that she was in pain.

"Are you…alright?" he asked, his voice hesitant. She nodded, biting her lip (another sign that she wasn't alright). He pressed the call button for the nurse, despite Pepper's protests. "Pepper, you can't lie to me. I know you're hurting."

She bit harder on her lip as tears welled in her eyes. He cupped her face in one of his hands, and she bit harder. He could hear the beeping speed up as her heart rate increased. She didn't pull away this time, but he could tell that there was definitely something wrong here. Pepper shouldn't be afraid of him, and that's exactly how she was acting. When she couldn't hold them back anymore, tears spilled down her cheeks.

"Pepper, what's wrong?"

"It just…hurts. And I keep thinking that he's got me back in that warehouse. The IVs…I keep thinking that they're more of that…damned drug he gave me. I don't ever want to be like that again. I couldn't…I couldn't hold on to my thoughts. They were running around in my head…"

"Are you talking about…earlier you mentioned Alice?"

"Yeah. That's what he called it. It made everything seem so small. The room seemed too small for me, like Alice when she fell down the rabbit hole. It was slightly hallucinogenic, I think…" she trailed off, not wanting to recall her time in captivity.

_You're here, with Tony, and you're safe. Nothing is going to hurt you. It's okay. It's okay…_

"We can talk about this later. You don't have to…you look…" Tony trailed off, knowing that finishing that sentence was highly inappropriate.

"Beat?" she said, trying to take the edge off. "Yeah, well, so do you."

"Well, I thought you wore it so well, I'd dress to match."

"Yeah?"

"Yeah. Get some sleep. Tomorrow I'm sure the police are going to want a statement and all that sort of thing," Tony suggested, reaching up to stroke her hair. She froze for a moment, fear wrapping its icy tendrils around her heart.

_Pepper, this is Tony. He isn't going to hurt you. It's okay._

She relaxed, but he had noticed her freeze up and pulled his hand away. He tried to smile reassuringly at her. He wanted to tell her that he loved her and wasn't ever going to let anyone hurt her ever again and that he was going to take care of her for the rest of her life, but he didn't want to push her, especially with the way she had been reaction to him. She was pulling away from the gentlest touch, and she had to brace herself before letting him touch her. What had this asshole done to her that would make her react this way?

_I'll find out later, when she is ready to tell me. I'm not going to push her, not when she's so jumpy like this. In her own time, she'll talk to me. I'm just going to have to learn patience. This will give me plenty of time to finish plotting my revenge on the guy that did this to her…_

Luckily, a nurse came in and gave Pepper a pain pill, which offered a reprieve from both their thoughts. Within minutes, she was asleep again. Tony continued to sit by her side, holding her hand and watching her as she slept. Half an hour later, he rested his head on the edge of her bed, and joined her in sleep.

* * *

**Author's Note:** I hope you enjoyed this chapter. Let me know what you liked, didn't like, etc. Thanks for reading, please review, and have a very Happy New Year.


	8. Family

**Author's Note: **So, here's a new chapter for your enjoyment. Read, review, have a good time.  


* * *

Detective O'Shea turned up at the hospital a two later, hoping to get statements from Tony Stark and Pepper Potts. He was in a general state of shock at the entire situation. Shocked that Pepper was alive, shocked that Dr. Derrick James was alive [though in lots of pain…O'Shea couldn't suppress his pleasure at that fact.], shocked that all of things he had seen in that warehouse had been kept secret from the world for so long. It all seemed so surreal. Things like that didn't exist, and things like this simply didn't happen…except that they did, and they had happened to Pepper Potts.

O'Shea had processed the warehouse, and had found the rooms where Pepper had been kept. One of the rooms had been very rudimentary, with concrete slab floors and cinderblock walls. The forensics team had found blood on the floors, presumably Pepper's. They were waiting on the DNA tests to prove it, but O'Shea already knew that it was hers. He was willing to bet that room was where Pepper had spent the majority of her captivity. They had found all the typical evidence to support that idea. Blood, vomit, urine…the idea of her being treated in such a way made him sick, and he didn't even know what they had done to her. There was a security feed, but he hadn't watched it yet, preferring to take Pepper's statement first.

Then there was the other room: a bedroom. It looked like a typical bedroom, but there were no windows or glass of any type. It was painted in very calm colors, and would have been a perfect bedroom, but O'Shea had a snaking suspicion that it was definitely used for something more sinister. He hoped with everything in him that Pepper—Miss Potts hadn't been sexually assaulted. They had found blood, but they had yet to find any other fluids, which was a good sign, but everything had been taken back to the lab for further analysis.

There had been a drawer that had been pulled out of a bedside table, and there was blood caked on it. After talking to some of the paramedics, who all said that Pepper Potts was definitely outdoors when they had found her, he was beginning to wonder if the blood on that drawer was hers. He had been unable to find a camera anywhere in the room, but he had been in a hurry to get to the hospital to hear about his victim. He was also very eager to arrest Derrick James for the kidnapping and attempted murder of Pepper Potts. Once the forensics came back on the bullets, he was hoping to also arrest him for the murder of David Lane. Yeah, a long time in prison would be good.

He knew that he needed to get Miss Potts's statement, as well as Tony Stark's, but from what he had come to understand, she was going to need surgery and surgery wasn't really conducive to taking statements. He hadn't spent too much time with Tony Stark, but he had spent enough to know that until Pepper was out of surgery and awake, he wasn't going to be available for a statement, either. He wasn't entirely sure of the nature of the weapons manufacturer and his personal assistant, but it was completely obvious to him that Tony was head over heels in love with her.

Knowing all of this, he had called the hospital shortly after Pepper had been taken there and asked to be notified when she was awake so that he could come and speak with her. He had just now gotten his phone call, thirty-nine hours later. Being a police detective, he was quite sure that the nurses and doctors had not called him when she first awoke, which didn't really bother him too terrible much. God knows, she needed the rest.

When he finally made it to the hospital, he had expected to find Tony sitting at Pepper's side, her propped up in the bed, looking tired. Instead, he found the last thing that he would have imagined. Pepper was propped up in bed but instead of sitting quietly with Tony at her side, Tony was there, along with Happy Hogan and Colonel James Rhodes, all smiling. It was the first time that O'Shea had laid eyes on Pepper Potts, but he could already understand the immense respect that (seemingly) the whole world had for her. She could have been lying down, looking like she was dying, dragging down everyone's mood. Instead, she was smiling and talking with everyone else. He hated to interrupt the scene, but he could put off taking statements no longer.

"Knock, Knock," he said, pushing to door open a little ways. Everyone in the room looked towards the door, apprehensive expressions on their faces. All except Pepper, who managed to look welcoming and gracious despite her injuries. And there were many injuries. He noticed the bruises and cuts that covered her face and neck first, and then saw her bandaged and splinted fingers. And she was smiling? The woman was a damned saint.

"Hello, Miss Potts. I'm Detective O'Shea. I was—am investigating your case. I know that it was a very traumatic experience, but I need to ask you a few questions, if that's alright," he said, his tone apologetic.

"Of course. Anything to help," Pepper said, still smiling, her voice calm. Rhodey and Happy rose to leave the room. Pepper just nodded her thanks. Tony sat stubbornly at her side, not wanting to leave. "Tony, please…I need to speak with Detective O'Shea alone."

"Pepper, you had major surgery two days ago. You spent the last week having God knows what being done to you…a little support while you're answering some questions is—"

"Tony, don't make me beg," she said, her tone a little sad, though her expression was not. He just looked at her, his face showing his obvious dislike at this request, but eventually he gave in. He rose and took his sweet time leaving the room, the whole time giving O'Shea what he would call 'the stink eye.' Even after leaving the room, Tony stood outside, watching in through the window.

"Miss Potts—"

"Please, call me Pepper."

"Okay…Pepper, can you tell me what happened from the moment you were taken in your apartment to…well, let's start there. What happened when you were taken from your apartment?" he asked gently.

"Um…I had just come in from work. It was almost midnight, I guess. I had walked into my bedroom and was about to turn on the lights when someone grabbed me. I don't remember which one it was, but there were two of them. They tried to…I tried to fight them off, and I remember them holding me down on my bed and kicking and fighting…I must have hit one of them because he started bleeding…I could feel it, and smell it…" She trailed off, lost in though. She sat there, quiet for a few minutes, her expression contemplative.

"I know that this was a very traumatic event. Take your time," O'Shea offered, trying to comfort her.

"Um…somehow I got away, and I was running down the hallway, and I fell. I don't really remember why I fell, but I did. I went through my glass coffee table, and the glass cut me. He had kicked me a few times, so it hurt…a lot. I couldn't really get my body to cooperate with me anymore. He—Derrick James—gave me something, it must have been a sedative, and knocked me out. He said something about needing me alive, which, in hindsight, is probably why I was. I was completely at their mercy. If they had wanted to kill me, they could have," she said.

"But they didn't."

"No, they didn't. They wanted information on some shipping orders that Tony had signed the day I was kidnapped. They wanted to know where the weapons were going, what kind they were…all that sort of thing. That was the whole point in it all. That's what he wanted to know. Except that he couldn't have known those things without help from someone else. Someone on the Board has to be in on all of it, because they were the only ones who even knew that a shipment was going to go out…"

Even as he continued talking, O'Shea was scribbling every word she said. "What else do you remember?" That made her smile. It was weird. It was a smile that didn't really belong on her face. She was a kind woman, and it was a sardonic smile.

"Oh, I remember everything. When I woke up, I was in that room. It was all concrete and cinderblock. Derrick came in and started asking me questions and babbling on about stupid things like, how I got my nickname and that sort of thing. He had a camera set up in one of the corners, so I'm sure you can find everything on tape."

"I can. I already have the tape in my possession. Tell me about your injuries," he said.

"The doctor said I had a punctured lung from getting shot. He also said that there were some broken ribs, probably from him—Derrick—kicking me a couple times. He hit me across the face, in the beginning, when I wouldn't answer his questions. He bathed my cuts in vinegar…it hurt, but…I think he must have broken my ribs when he was taking me from home, because half the reason it took so long to escape was because they hurt so bad. It hurt to breathe…"

"We found another room…a bedroom. Can you tell me what happened there?" His tone was gentle.

"They…Derrick and…I think the other's one's name was David…took me there. They had drugged me with an experimental drug called Alice. It was developed illegally behind Tony's back. It's mildly hallucinogenic and definitely causes paranoia—"

"Alice?"

"You know, Alice fell down the rabbit hole and into Wonderland. The children's story by Lewis Caroll," Pepper explained patiently.

"Right. Please continue."

"I was in and out most of the time that I was in that room. I don't actually know what I said for a while, because of the drugs, but I'm assuming that I didn't tell him what he wanted to know because he was still asking me about it. I tricked him into thinking that I was going to write it all down, but I hit him with a drawer. I don't really know how they didn't notice immediately that I was gone…Derrick was unconscious, but David was there. I don't know where he was during all of it, though. Derrick did all the torturing."

O'Shea hesitated before asking his next question. He didn't want to ask it because he knew that it was going to be so painful to answer. She was holding up remarkably well for someone who had experienced such a terrible ordeal, but he didn't want to break her, especially not with Tony Stark standing right outside, waiting to skin him alive at her first tear.

"Pepper, can you tell me about the torture?" She took a deep breath, well, as deep as she was able, anyway, and exhaled slowly, steeling herself to answer.

"I…He beat me. At first he just hit me across the face, but when I refused to tell him…that's when he wiped my cuts with vinegar. He broke my fingers, and then he…he put pliers under my fingernails and tore them off…it hurt so much I bit through my lip and threw up. I said something to him…something rude, I'm sure, and he slammed my head into the floor a few times. But…"

"Yes?"

"He wasn't always like that…sometimes he would hold me or stroke my hair or hold my hand…he had one of Tony's shirts, and he looked so much like him…he smelled like him, and he shouldn't have. It was all wrong, and it made me want to tell him, but I didn't. That's when he gave me the drug. After I escaped, I passed out on the fire escape. When I woke up, it was morning, or well, daylight. They must have noticed that I was missing and they came out looking for me. They argued, David and Derrick, and Derrick shot him. Just…in cold blood, he just shot him. He wanted me to come inside, but I wouldn't. That's when Tony showed up. He rescued me."

"You escaped on your own."

"I was about to be dragged back inside, when he turned up and beat the hell of Derrick. That part is a little hazy, though. When he first got there, Derrick was shooting at him, which was stupid because the suit is gold-titanium alloy…"

"Miss Potts—Pepper, Mr. Stark could have stayed in the room with you for this. I can call him in, if that would make things easier," he offered.

"No…no, I don't want him to have to hear it all. He would blame himself. I know he does. He has this sad look to him when he looks at me, and it would only be worse if he knew everything. I know that he doesn't want me to see it, and he could probably hid it from anyone else, but not from me. Plus…he beat Derrick pretty badly when he found me…I don't want him to kill him…because that's what he would do. Come hell or high water, Tony would kill that bastard, and I can't let him do that. Tony is a better man than that."

"You don't think he has the right to decide if he's better than him or not?"

"You're a detective. You're supposed to be encouraging law and order, are you not?" she asked dryly.

"He's Iron Man. I don't think that a speech on the harms of vigilantism are going to do much good."

"I don't…I'll tell him everything when the time is right, but for now, I just want some normalcy. I've missed him—all of them. Rhodey and Happy and Tony, and I just want to try to get things back to normal. Besides, I'm not going to give that son of a bitch the pleasure of knowing that he affected me. I'm not going to let him know that I'm afraid. I can't be the victim in this, Detective. That's just not me."

There were tears in her eyes as she spoke. Not sad tears, but tears of determination. Yeah, this woman definitely deserved a medal of sainthood. Despite her situation, despite the fact that she had a punctured lung and several broken bones, she was thinking of other people. Or rather, she was thinking about Tony. O'Shea could tell from the look on her face when she said his name, that soft, affectionate look, that she loved him. No doubt about it.

"Thank you, Pepper. That's all I need for now. If I have anymore questions, I'll be sure to let you know."

"Of course."

"Pepper?" he asked, just as he was about to leave the room.

"Yes?"

"It is okay to worry about yourself, you know. I mean, it's your job to take care of Tony Stark, but—"

"You know, I think that people don't give him enough credit. I mean, yes, he works too much, and if anything happened to me, he would have to learn his social security number, but…he would be fine. He's managed to hold up thus far. I mean, he managed to get himself out of that cave in Afghanistan without the least bit of help from me. He could make it."

"That may be so, but…you should get well soon."

Pepper couldn't help but smile at that. It was a real smile, and it definitely belonged on her face. Detective O'Shea smiled at her and left the room, only to find Tony Stark waiting for him outside the door.

"She's crying. What did you say?" he demanded.

"Mr. Stark, she just had to recall everything that happened to her during her captivity. That's not exactly a walk in the park. She handled it very well. Better than most of the kidnapping victims that I've spoken to. She's quite a woman."

"Well no shit. What did she say?"

"I'm sorry, I can't tell you that. Give her some time…she'll tell you when she's ready."

"Are you kidding me?"

"Tony, he's just doing his job," Rhodey said, trying to rescue the detective from an uncomfortable position. "Cut the man some slack. He's right. Pepper will talk to us when she's ready."

"Also, I need to get your statement, which, I've heard, is easier if you're not trying to skin me alive," O'Shea commented, trying to lighten the mood. His trick worked and Tony actually cracked a smile. Not a real one, like the one O'Shea had seen when he was sitting in the room with Pepper, but it would do for now. "Think you can manage that?"

"Yeah. I think, maybe, I can do that."

* * *

It didn't take long for Tony to give his statement. O'Shea was pretty sure that he could find everything on some security camera somewhere, anyway. And it wasn't like anyone was going to hold it against Tony for beating the monster—man—who had kidnapped and tortured Pepper. O'Shea tried to be as businesslike as possible so that he could wrap it up quickly and get back to the forensics. Also, Tony's fidgeting was getting obnoxious. They managed to make it through the questions with very little drama, and Tony was surprisingly cooperative. He figured that if he cooperated, he would be able to return to Pepper faster.

"Thank you, Mr. Stark. If I have anymore questions, I'll give you a call."

"Thanks, Detective."

"Oh, and tell your assistant to get well soon," O'Shea said. Tony just nodded and went to rejoin Happy and Rhodey, who were sitting with Pepper. O'Shea lingered outside her door, watching the four of them as they sat together. Tony was still worried, of course, but he took his place at Pepper's side, and smiled at her. They talked and laughed, and looked…happy. The strength of the human spirit would never cease to amaze Bobby O'Shea. No matter the setbacks and disasters, somehow, people managed to keep despair at bay. It seemed hardwired into them that they must not give in to despair, and the people in that room were definitely living proof of that.

Glancing from Pepper to the window, Tony could see O'Shea lingering, watching them. The detective nodded and walked away. Pepper was listening to Rhodey talk rather animatedly about the exploits of one of his pilots in training to notice the wordless exchange.

"And I'm trying to explain to him that a machine will never be able to be the same as a pilot's instincts and then, of course, Tony walks up and undermines me by talking about spring break in college—"

"You have to admit, spring break in college was considerably more interesting than talking about your instincts," Tony interrupted.

"Sometimes you have to tell them what they need to hear, not what they want to hear," Rhodey said.

"Yeah, I never got that memo. Pepper, did I ever get that memo?"

"I think it was an e-mail, actually, but you deleted that one without reading it," she quipped with a smile.

"That sounds like our boy," Rhodey said with a laugh.

"Yes, it does. It definitely does." Pepper lay back against her pillows, basking in the glow of being loved. Rhodey, Happy, Tony…they were her boys, and they loved her. Perhaps, well, definitely, not all in the same way, but they did nonetheless. There is nothing better than being in the presence of family, and that's what they were. They were a small, albeit dysfunctional, family unit, and it was wonderful. Minus the part where they sometimes hit and overworked each other. That part was less wonderful.

Pepper was unsure how long they sat around her bed talking. Mostly, they joked and tried to keep the atmosphere light, which she appreciated. There was an unspoken understanding between all of them that she didn't want to talk about what had happened, and that she definitely wasn't ready to talk about what happened. She glanced at the clock, and she knew that soon one of the nurses would be coming to tell them that they all had to leave, that visiting hours were over, and she was absolutely dreading that moment. She wasn't ready to be alone with her thoughts, yet, and that's what was going to happen. Even Tony Stark couldn't fight the fierce little head nurse, Phyllis.

"I'm sorry, but visiting hours are over. You all are going to have to leave," Phyllis said, sticking her head into the doorway. All the boys groan in protest, Tony loudest of them all. "I'm serious. I should have made you leave hours ago. Look how tired the poor child is. Go, shoo." She swatted at Rhodey and Happy as they left the room. Tony stayed firmly planted in his chair. "You, too, hot shot. Let's go."

"I'm not going," he said stubbornly.

"That's fine. I'll just call security, then. Now, you can leave like you're supposed to, or I can call security and they can escort you out. Which will it be?"

"She's been tortured, and you want to leave her alone?" Tony asked, his tone implying that he obviously thought she was insane.

"She is going to be fine. We're not going to let anything happen to her, Mr. Stark. Besides, you look like you could use some sleep, too. And you smell like you could use a shower. Go home, get some sleep, for God's sake, take a shower, and come back tomorrow," the nurse said.

"Tony, it's just a night. I'll be fine," Pepper piped up from her bed. Tony studied her face carefully, and apparently decided that she wasn't well enough to leave alone. Nevermind that she was in a hospital full of people who could take care of her. Pepper had an idea. "Phyllis, can they stay just another half hour or so? Please?"

Phyllis's face softened as she looked at Pepper, and she nodded. "Only half an hour, though, of I am going to call security." She quickly left, and Rhodey and Happy poured into the room.

"Rhodey, could you please go get me something to drink? There's a vending machine around the corner with pineapple tangerine juice in it," she requested. Rhodey nodded and started to walk out the room.

"Rhodey, can you get me one, too?" Tony asked. Rhodey nodded and left the room, a subtle smile on his face. He returned quickly with two bottles of pineapple tangerine juice. Tony's was open.

"This is open!" Tony protested.

"I only took a sip. I think that's a small price for you to pay for all the times I've covered your ass." Tony nodded before gulping down the entire bottle. Pepper just sipped hers, intently watching Tony. They sat in silence for a few minutes, but not an awkward silence. It was a companionable silence, one that didn't really need to be filled. Tony was the first to break it.

"Rhodey, Hogan, can you wait outside for a minute. I'd like to talk to Pepper." They rose and left the room without any protest, leaving the two alone.

"Pepper, I realize that you don't really want to talk to me right now about what happened, and I'm not going to push you. I hope that you know that you can talk to me about this whenever you're ready. I'll be here. What I'm worried about, is what he wanted. Can you tell me what he wanted?" Tony asked gently. He looked at her hand, as if asking permission to take it into his own. She nodded and he took her hand as if it were a lifeline.

"He wanted information on the shipping orders that you signed. He wanted to know where it was going, what kind of weapons there were. Anything and everything that I could tell him, he wanted to know. The only thing is, he shouldn't even know about the shipment at all. That means that someone—"

"Someone on the Board is in on it. I know. The brothers that helped, Gregory and David Lane, worked in the security department of our company. They had criminal records…"

"They had to have someone helping them out, or they never would have gotten the jobs," she finished for him. "Holy hell, Tony. Okay, um…what do they all have in common?"

"Research and Development department. The Lanes worked security detail for that department, and Derrick James worked in the department."

"The head of R&D is Philip Richardson. He doesn't really strike me as the type—"

"Obi didn't strike me as the type, either."

"No, I mean, Phil is happily married with two children. When is he going to have time to take over what Obadiah had been doing?"

"I don't know, but I'm still going to check him out," Tony said with a yawn.

"Well, there has to be someone else. Marketing always works really closely with R&D. So does public relations…" Pepper's voice seemed to get farther and farther away and Tony couldn't seem to keep his eyes open. He lay his head down on her bed, resting against her blanket-covered legs, and closed his eyes, just for a second…Then he was out like a light.

Pepper breathed a sigh of relief, before motioning Rhodey and Happy, who had been watching intently through the window, back into the room. They came in quickly, tired smiles on their faces.

"How did you know to…?" Happy asked.

"Sometimes Tony doesn't sleep, and the best way to get him to do so is to…help him along, shall we say?" Pepper said. "Rhodey and I worked this out right after he announced to the entire world that he was Iron Man. Pineapple is the code word. I didn't actually know if they had any juice around the corner, but I couldn't just look at you and say "pineapple." Nice cover, by the way."

"Easy as apple pie," Rhodey said. "Getting him out to the car, however, is going to be less easy. Can you give me a hand, Hogan?"

"Of course. Goodnight, Pepper. I'm sure Tony will be up here bright and early tomorrow morning."

"Actually, he has a meeting with the executives from Fujikawa, Inc. tomorrow at 9:30. And I'm having my ankle fixed at the same time, so there's no need for him to be here. When you drop him off at the house, tell Jarvis to—"

"We will. Now you get some sleep," Rhodey told her. "Goodnight."

"Goodnight."

The two men held Tony between them and carried him from the hospital. Phyllis stared after them for a long time before coming into Pepper's room to find her sitting up in bed, looking sad.

"You drugged that nice young man?" Phyllis asked her. Pepper smiled mischievously.

"I would never do that…Rhodey did the actual drugging."

"Right," Phyllis answered sarcastically. "Well, I say good for you. He needed the sleep. He hasn't left since you got here, and he sure needed a shower. I could smell him from the nurse's station." That made Pepper laugh, which, in turn, made her flinch. "I'm going to give you a sedative to help you sleep. It will also keep you from dreaming, which sometimes, can help more than anything else."

"Thank you," Pepper whispered.

"And Pepper, whatever is going on in your head…don't be ashamed of it. It's not uncommon for people who have been…been through what you have been through to have strange reactions to physical contact. Give it time, and it'll fade," Phyllis said. She handed Pepper her sleeping pill and left the room. Pepper quickly took the pill and was asleep within minutes. Luckily for Pepper, she didn't dream.

* * *

Rhodey and Happy got Tony back to the mansion with no problems. He slept in the back seat of the car all the way there. Rhodey had been a little bit surprised when Pepper had said "pineapple." He had figured that she would want Tony there, with her. Perhaps it had something to do with what the doctor had told them about her having psychological damage from all of this. But then, when she had been awake, she had been very much herself. It was all too confusing to him.

They carried Tony up to his bedroom, but they were very surprised to find that his bed hadn't been slept in. They knew that he hadn't been sleeping well while Pepper was gone, but he had been sleeping. Wanting him to be comfortable when he woke up, Rhodey had asked Jarvis.

"Jarvis, where has Tony been sleeping for the past week?"

"He has been sleeping in Miss Potts's bedroom, sir."

They were hardly surprised to hear that. Once stated, it made all the sense in the world. He had wanted her near him, so he would retreat to where she spent her time. They quickly got him to her bedroom (with a little direction from Jarvis), and deposited him on the bed. Rhodey pulled off his shoes, but otherwise, they left him there to sleep. On the way out, Rhodey reminded Jarvis of everything that Pepper had told them earlier.

"Jarvis, Tony has a meeting with the executives from Fujikawa, Inc. tomorrow at 9:30 in the morning. Please remind him."

"I can do that, Colonel Rhodes."

"Also, tell him that Pepper is having her ankle surgery at the same time tomorrow morning, and that there is no need for him to skip out on his meeting and come to the hospital when he can't see her."

"I will do."

"Thanks, Jarvis. Have a good night. Oh, and don't forget to wake him up in time to—"

"I know, sir."

Rhodey just smiled and left the Stark mansion to go home.

* * *

Despite the drugs, Tony Stark still dreamed.

_Visiting hours were over, and it was time for him to go. He didn't want to. He wanted more than anything to climb in the bed next to her and hold her while she slept, but that wasn't possible. Instead, he took her hand in his once again, just for a brief second, and she smiled at him. It was a forced smile, he could tell, but at least she wasn't pulling away from him. _

_"If you need anything, you call. I don't care what time it is—"_

_"Tony, these fingers aren't much good for dialing."_

_"Then you get one of those nurses to call for you. If you need anything at all, don't hesitate—"_

_"I know. I won't. Now go home and go to bed. When was the last time you had a decent sleep, anyway?"_

_"It's been…a week or so," he answered sheepishly._

_"That's what I thought. Now go. I'll be here tomorrow, I promise."_

_"I'm holding you to that."_

_"You do that," Pepper said. Then, before she could react, he kissed her gently on the forehead. She froze for a split second before her heart monitors went crazy as her panic rose. He was helpless to do anything but stand back and watch as she had a full on panic attack in front of him. A nurse rushed into the room and tried to calm her. _

_"Miss Potts, you need to calm down. You're having a panic attack, and hyperventilating definitely isn't good for your lung. You shouldn't even be propped up this much. Take slow, calming breaths. Think of things that soothe you. Green meadows, blue skies…" _

_Despite the nurse's calming voice and attempts at comforting, Pepper's heart rate continued to rise until suddenly, it stopped. There was a beep, a never ending beep, and a flat line on the heart monitor._

_Doctors came rushing in and they shocked her and shocked her until it looked like she was doing some kind of strange, convulsive dance on the bed. He reached out to take her hand, but was batted away by a doctor. Finally, after minutes of CPR and paddles, they called time of death._

_ "Time of death: 12:04 AM." As the doctor turned, Tony got a good look at his face. It was Derrick James, and his face was contorted into a wicked smile, and he laughed and laughed…_

He bolted upright, covered in cold sweat, breathing hard. He was still in his clothes from earlier, and it took him several minutes to figure out where he was. Pepper's bedroom. He was in Pepper's bedroom…

Knowing that he wasn't going to be able to sleep anymore, he rose and headed into the bathroom for a shower, the whole time thinking of Pepper and her situation. When he was with Pepper, he could focus on her, and what it was that she needed. Not that he knew, because she didn't seem overly eager to tell him, which was concerning, but it could also be part of her desire for normalcy. She was independent, sometimes to a fault, and even now, she was sticking to her guns. And he hated it. He hated that she didn't want to tell him what was going on in that head of hers, because if he knew, he could help her fix it.

Instead, all he knew was that she was afraid of him. She didn't want to be, and if he were anyone else, he wouldn't have noticed, but he was who he was, and he was definitely noticing. Every time he touched her, her heart rate increase, and he could feel her tense under his hands. He could practically hear her thoughts; hear her telling herself to calm down. But she shouldn't have to do that. She should be able to look at him and hold his hand without having a panic attack.

_What did that son of a bitch do to you, Pepper? And why won't you tell me? I wouldn't judge her, she should know that…None of this was her fault…does she know that? She should…_

He showered, and it was quite possibly the longest shower he had ever taken. He wasn't sure how long he stood under the water and let run over him. As he did, he tried to understand all the possible reasons for her not wanting to tell him what happened. It was painful, yes. Could think that it was her fault? Did she think that he would think less of her?

_No, that's not right. I know her better than that, and Pepper's not the kind of person to blame herself. There has to be some other reason…_

She was protecting him. That was the only explanation that made sense. She had always done what she thought was best for him, and now, she was clinging to that. He understood her need for normalcy, but…she was still in the hospital…normalcy could wait…except that it couldn't. The tables were turned, and now he was going to take care of her by letting her handle this in her own way. As much as he hated to admit it, everyone was right when they said that she would talk to him in her own time. He would be there to catch her if she fell, and he was definitely going to let her know that he was there, should she need him, but he wasn't going to push her.

He didn't realize just how long he had been in the shower until he looked down and realized that his hands were looking like prunes. He bathed quickly and exited the shower, still thinking about Pepper and who the hell could be behind everything. Instead of going to bed like he should have, he pulled on some sweats and a t-shirt before settling in front of his computer.

"Jarvis, I need you to pull up the schedules for each one of my board members, please, if you don't mind."

"I can do that, sir. However, I do want to remind you that it is late and you have a meeting tomorrow morning with the executives from—"

"I know. What time is the meeting?"

"9:30 AM."

"Thank you, Jarvis. Wake me up at six thirty please."

"Will do, sir. Also, the schedules you asked for are on your screen now."

Tony spent the remainder of his waking moments pouring over the schedules, trying to tie any of his board members to the Derrick James or the Lane brothers. He was having very little success, and had dozed off several times before Jarvis woke him and directed him back to bed. Tony made his way to Pepper's bedroom and as soon as his head hit the pillow he was asleep.

His dreams were plagued with blood and drugs and concrete and Pepper. Pepper bleeding, rambling incoherently, broken and dying on a concrete floor. When Jarvis woke him for good at six thirty, he was covered in cold sweat, and would definitely need another shower. However, one good thing had come from it all. He didn't need to pour over schedules trying to tie his board members to the Derrick James and the Lane brothers. Instead, he would just pay a little visit to Derrick in the hospital.

* * *

**Author's Note: **So, there it is. Read and review, please. I'm about to start back to school, and I'm working on some other stories, so I don't know how soon I'll be able to update. Review and I'll try my best to get it out as soon as I possibly can. Hope you enjoyed.


	9. Coming Home

**Author's Note:** I'm so sorry for the delay. I didn't actually think that the everyday school grind would start so early, and it definitely did. But, here is chapter nine for your enjoyment. As always, read and review, and have a good time reading it.

* * *

Tony Stark strode into Derrick James's hospital room at seven o'clock in the morning, his face a picture of determination. No one tried to stop him, but even if they had, they would have been unsuccessful. He had decided that he was going to find out who was in on this conspiracy, even if it meant pulling Derrick's intestines out through his nostrils. Especially if it meant pulling Derrick's intestines out through his nostrils. The two guards, realizing that Tony wasn't going to be stopped, looked at each other and made a non-verbal agreement to go get breakfast from the cafeteria.

Derrick was laid up in the bed, asleep, and tucked under the covers of his nice, warm hospital bed. While the blankets hid most of the injuries that Tony had inflicted, he could still see the effect that the wall had on Derrick's face. It was bruised, puffy, and scraped on one side. Bandages were wrapped around the top of his head, though Tony wasn't really sure why. He just assumed that they were his doing. His left arm was in a cast, and, through the blankets, one foot appeared to be larger than the other, which he could only assume was another cast.

_The only problem with this picture is that the bastard's asleep. Let's see if we can't change that…_

Tony grabbed Derrick's shoulder, the one that was attached to his casted arm, and gave a swift, sharp tug. Derrick jerked and awoke with a shriek, his eyes wide. He was very disoriented at first, but after a few moments, he gathered his bearings. Once he did, and knew just who was standing over him, fear twisted his features into a most unattractive expression.

"Hi Derrick. You're looking a little pale. Something wrong?" Tony asked.

"No. Not at all," Derrick said, getting himself under control. He managed to keep his expression neutral, which was quite a feat.

"Wrong answer. You see, something is wrong. A lot of somethings, actually. There are traitors in my company, and you're working with and for them. Who is it?" Tony demanded. Derrick remained silent. "Now really isn't the time to be noble and stand up for your buddies, Derrick. Who are you working for?"

"Stark Industries," he replied smugly. Tony sat on the foot of his bed, accidentally-on-purpose bumping his broken ankle. Derrick cried out in pain, but didn't say anything.

"It's not really the time to be a smart-ass, either." Tony was stubborn, but Derrick was being equally stubborn. Tony applied a little bit more pressure to Derrick's ankle. He bit his lip and grimaced, but refused to say anything. "Derrick, you tortured Pepper Potts. I think to say that I'm upset with you would be quite an understatement. Those kind police officers have gone to get breakfast, and I am going to find out who you're working for. You might as well tell me now and save us both the trouble." His voice was dangerous, and with the mood he was in right now, he was willing to carry out every threat that he had ever imagine. Derrick, while insane, was still smart enough to realize this.

"I don't know," Derrick finally confessed after a long, torturous silence. Tony stood there in shock for several moments, staring at the monster in front of him, his thoughts racing.

_He doesn't know! How can he not know? He's the only concrete link that we have. What kind of person tortures someone for people they don't know?_

"What do you mean, you don't know? You had to get your information from somewhere."

"It came to me through David or Gregory Lane. I didn't know who was giving me the orders, just that I was getting them. They were my liaison to…whoever," he confessed. This did nothing to calm.

"How did you get involved? Someone had to have approached you about getting involved," Tony asked, his voice hard. Derrick hesitated, studying Tony's face, and seeing nothing comforting there. He saw his death in the other man's eyes, and it made him sick. However, he knew that if he didn't explain, things were going to get very messy, very fast.

"I had been using the labs at Stark Industries to develop a drug. It was highly illegal, and they found out. David and Greg Lane turned up and gave me no choice but to work for…whoever. The other option was going to jail. Plus, they were offering me a…I think the proper term would be a shit load of money. They were paying me more than you pay your little personal assistant," Derrick explained. Tony applied more pressure to his ankle.

"She is not my 'little personal assistant.' Pepper Potts is a hell of a woman," Tony snapped, raising his voice over the sounds of Derrick's howling. "Her name doesn't cross your lips again. Now, tell me, more."

"They were part of the security crew in the R&D department, which made it easier for them to deliver orders or payments or what have you."

"What were they paying you for?"

"The drug I developed. They wanted it, and they wanted me to design more. The drug had symptoms that came in waves. The first wave was hallucinations accompanied by claustrophobia. They have a tendency to think that the room is smaller than it really is, and that they are too big for the room. It makes their thoughts race, like they can't hang on to them. Usually, they start babbling on about whatever it is that they're thinking about. In the next phase, the hallucinations are gone, and the fear remains, but usually they're very fuzzy afterwards—"

"Alice," Tony whispered.

"Yes. I named it Alice, because it pulls you down the rabbit hole. I was really quite surprised that your Pepper was as coherent as she was. She managed to escape even when she was still under the influence of Alice. That's quite a feat. I would love to find out why that is. What made her different from the other test subjects—"

"There. Were. _others?_" Each word was punctuated with a light smack to his injured arm.

"Of course. With every drug you have to run clinical trials. They weren't the most professional trials. Homeless people don't really give you the most accurate control group—"

"You designed this drug in a Stark Industries lab, tested it on homeless people, and _you used it on Pepper._ Give me one good reason why I shouldn't end you right here and now," he said, his voice full of disgust.

"Because you don't know what the lasting affects are," Derrick replied smugly. Losing his temper, Tony backhanded him across his bandaged head. "No, no, no! If you hurt me too badly, you'll never know."

"Oh, you'll tell me. Are there lasting affects?" Tony said with another slap.

"I don't exactly know just how lasting they are. Thanks to Pepper's escape, I haven't had a chance to finish my research. I haven't been able to observe any of the subjects for more than two weeks after administering the drug, so I can't be sure. Ninety-nine percent, however, had incredibly strong nightmares afterwards, that did not appear to taper off like I imagined that they would have."

"So you're telling me that you designed a hallucinogenic drug designed to induce fear for _kicks_? What the _fuck_ kind of creature invents something like that?"

There was an eerie peacefulness on Derrick's face; it was the calm before the storm. It was actually more like the calm before the category five hurricane that comes tearing in and upsets everything in its path. Then he just smiled, as if he was recalling some fond, private memory that made sense only to him.

"Have you ever witnessed the complete collapse of the human mind? No, you haven't. It really is a beautiful thing. Normally, they start out fighting it—fighting me. Then, I give them the drug, and it's…it's a whole new world. At first they get feral, like they're panicked because they don't understand what's happening to them. They're confused, as well. Then all of that starts to fade away, and they start telling you all the thoughts that are racing through their heads, and it's so…it's a beautiful moment, because in that moment, you truly understand what makes them tick. They are laying out their minds for me to see, and it's simply…intoxicating. And they just tell me everything, and then…eventually, there's a peace in them. They have confessed everything to me, and I've brought them peace. I can give them a gift that no one else can…"

Tony sat still in shocked silence. He had always suspected that this man was a psychopath. After all, he had tortured Pepper, he had to be. But the idea of someone getting off on it, like this man so obviously did, was sickening to him. It was all he could do not to bend over the trashcan and throw up his morning coffee and protein shake. This bastard had set out to find a drug to destroy people. To mentally tear them open so that their guts were on display for him to play with.

_What kind of sick fuck does that? God, and knowing the lasting effects…Pepper could have those effects. If Pepper has nightmares for the rest of her life, I think I am definitely going to make it a priority to make sure this man gets a taste of his own medicine. Literally._

"People are not here for you to fuck with. People are not science experiments, Derrick, that you can just play around with for your own sick, personal enjoyment. Especially not my Pepper. I am going to make you pay for what you've done to her. If she has any of the lasting effects that you mentioned, you're going to get a sip of your own medicine. I think you would be amazed at how far a little money can go. After hearing what you've done to Pepper, I don't think there's a person in the world who would mind if you went abso-fucking-lutely insane." With that, Tony gave him a good, firm handshake, making sure to squeeze his broken fingers, and left the room to go check on Pepper. On the way out the door, the police officers, who had long since returned and heard every word of Derrick's insane rant, gave him a respectful nod.

"Please give Miss Potts our best regards," one of the said. Tony nodded tersely and went to look in on his Pepper to make sure she was okay.

_My Pepper. How long has she been 'my Pepper?' I don't remember ever specifically starting to call her that…it just…happened. But it feels right. She's my Pepper…well, I'm her Tony, anyway._

He ran into Phyllis at the nurse's station at the end of Pepper's hall. She was looking tough and scary, as per usual. Before he could pass the nurse's station and make it to Pepper's room, Phyllis had flagged him down. In his frustration over his apparent dead-end, and his worry for Pepper, he didn't hear her. So when she stepped in front of him and poked him in the chest with a short, sausage-like finger, he was surprised.

"Listen, hotshot, she's still asleep, okay? And I remember her specifically saying that you had a meeting with someone this morning."

"Meeting's not until 9:30. I'll be there. How is she?" he asked, his voice full of worry. Phyllis's brow creased, and she was silent for a long a time, as though she didn't want to answer the question. "How is she?" he asked again, more insistently.

"She's doing very well. She's healing nicely, and when she's awake, she's staying positive. But no one has control over their dreams, because if they did…"

"She's having nightmares?"

"She didn't last night, because she was given a very strong sedative. But I don't know how she is going to do without them. This isn't the kind of event that you just get over. I mean, yeah, hotshot, your girlfriend—"

"Personal assistant," he corrected. Pepper always hated it when they assumed falsely that they were together.

"Is that what they're calling it these days?" she asked skeptically. "Well, that lady in there is very, very strong, and is handling this better than a lot of people that I've seen come through. But you also have to keep in mind that she can't control what's going on in her subconscious. She was brutally beaten, among other things. That's not the sort of thing that you can forgive and forget, so to speak. She needs to see a therapist—"

"Oh, good luck with that one," Tony said, skeptical. Pepper wanted a return to normalcy, and talking to a therapist was not something that was normal for her. A therapist was going to want to talk about the experience and how it made her feel, and the whole affair was something that Pepper was trying to put behind her. He thought that it probably wasn't the healthiest way of dealing with the situation, but he also knew better than to presume that he knew Pepper better than she knew herself. He knew that he was going to have to walk a fine line. He needed to be as normal as possible, and yet still be there for her when she needed to talk to him.

"She may not want to, but it helps in situations like these."

"Situations like these? Pepper is not a typical woman, so what typically works, might not work for her."

"There's no harm in trying. Her doctor will probably talk to her about it after her surgery," Phyllis said, sticking to her guns. Phyllis was stubborn, and very used to being able to out-stubborn her patients. That definitely was not going to work on Tony Stark, and what's more, it definitely wouldn't work on Pepper Potts, who, given the day of the week, was sometimes more stubborn than Tony.

"You can try, but I'm willing to bet she doesn't go for it."

Phyllis waved him away, exasperated. "Get out of my hair, hotshot. She's asleep, so try not to wake her up." Tony nodded and headed down the hallway to her room. She was sound asleep, no traces of any distress on her face. She looked perfectly at peace. He smiled and took a seat beside her for a few minutes. He knew that if she were awake, she would be scolding him for not looking over the briefs that she had put together for this meeting two weeks ago. That in mind, he kissed her forehead gently and left the room. She didn't stir.

* * *

The meeting took entirely too long, in Tony's opinion, but eventually, it was over. It took the better part of the day, and they had to break for lunch, but he got everything accomplished that he should have gotten accomplished. He was glad that he was going to be able to tell Pepper how things went, and that she would be happy with the progress made. And putting a smile on her face was vitally important.

Dr. Phair was talking to Pepper when he arrived, and they both appeared to be pretty engrossed in their conversation. They were both very startled when Tony opened the door and entered, but that only stopped their conversation for a moment, which then resumed heatedly.

"Miss Potts, before you leave, I'm going to insist that you speak with a counselor," Dr. Phair was saying, rather emphatically.

"Dr. Phair, I'm fine. I don't need to talk about what happened. I just want things to get back to normal as quickly as possible," Pepper said with just as much emotion. Tony could see already that this was going to be a long, drawn out chat if he didn't step in. It was like watching an unstoppable force, Pepper, hit an immovable object, Dr. Phair, though Tony was quite sure that if he let the argument go on long enough, Pepper would prove that Phair wasn't so immovable. But that wouldn't be good for her, so he intervened and used the only thing that he knew was going to sway Pepper: logic.

"Pepper, the doctor seems pretty—" he started.

"Tony, I don't want to see a therapist, I just want to go home," she said.

"And the sooner you see this therapist, the sooner you can get home," he told her. She sighed in frustration because she knew he was right. And she wanted more than anything else to be home.

Home. It was strange, when she thought of home, she didn't picture her apartment. Instead, home had come to mean the Stark estate. She missed the immaculate white floors and the grandiose waterfall in the living room. She missed her wing, and being woken up by Jarvis in the mornings after she had stayed the night. She really missed Jarvis. Yes, she realized, home was with Tony.

"Fine. I'll see your therapist. Do you schedule that, or do I?" she said reluctantly. The doctor just beamed at Tony, who had just managed to talk some sense into the most stubborn patient he had ever had.

"I can schedule it for tomorrow afternoon," the doctor answered.

"When will I be able to go home?"

"Probably a few more days. I don't think you realize how serious your injuries were, Miss Potts. You had a punctured lung and severe internal bleeding—"

"I remember, I was there. Schedule it for the day you're going to discharge me. At least that way, afterwards, I won't have to be alone with my thoughts."

"Pepper, you don't want to go home too early and just wind up back in here again when you push yourself too hard," Tony interjected, again appealing to Pepper's logic. She sighed in defeat, and the doctor quickly vacated, not wanting to get into another verbal tussle with his patient. Tony pulled up a chair beside Pepper. She started asking her questions before he even had a chance to open his mouth.

"How did the meeting go this morning?" she asked.

"It went well. Very well. We sealed the deal, in fact. The manufacturing should start within the next three weeks. They said that they were very impressed by the extent of my knowledge of their operations—"

"They should be. Those briefs were the most thorough ones I've ever written. The numbers on this thing are going to be—"

"Huge. I know. I wish you could have been there. It felt strange not having you there."

"Trust me, it felt stranger here. Everyone keeps telling me I have to see a 'counselor.' They say that about you, but never me," she said with a deep sigh. This time, it was out of exhaustion. Tony knew how she felt; he felt exactly the same.

"Pepper…talking to the therapist won't be that bad. They'll ask you a few questions, you'll answer them with all the wit and charm that you possess, and then you'll go home."

"Tony…my place…has to be remodeled…"

"You know that the mansion is always available to you, if you want it." He tried to phrase his answer carefully, as to not reveal his inner child jumping up and down shouting, "Please! Pick me! Please!" He also didn't want to push Pepper too hard. She wanted to be in control of what was happening to her, so he had to at least act like he was going to give her some of that control.

"It would make things easier. Jarvis would make it easier for me to work, and there are plenty bedrooms on the first floor," she said by way of acceptance. Tony tried to suppress his delight, but a smile leaked out. His enthusiasm was contagious, and Pepper couldn't help but smile also.

"So, why do they want you to talk to a shrink, exactly?" Tony asked, trying to keep his tone light. He wanted some answers from her, and since she wasn't going to tell him up front, he would just have to puzzle around. Unfortunately for him, despite being on pain meds, Pepper was still a very sharp woman, and knew exactly what he was trying to do.

"They're worried about my, I think the term they used was 'violent withdrawal when exposed to intimate gestures.' They're concerned that if I don't get treatment, I may have lasting problems forming relationships."

"Because of Derrick?"

"Yes, because of Derrick. Tony, subtlety has never been your strong suit. I promise that when I'm ready, I will tell you everything. But right now, I'm not ready. Not yet. But I promise I will be, and when I am, you'll be the first to know," she said, her voice full of emotion and her eyes full of tears. Her conflicting emotions were written all over her face. He could see hints of pain and, worse, fear. She shouldn't be afraid of him, and that was eating at him. He didn't understand her fear, but he tried to comfort her by blurting out what was running through his head.

"I understand…well, no, not really, that's a lie. I mean…I guess I understand why you don't want to talk about it, but I don't understand why you're afraid. I don't know if you're afraid _of _me, or if maybe you're afraid that if I know, I'll somehow think less of you…and that will never happen. I love you. You will never have any reason to be afraid of me, because I promise, I will never hurt you, and I will never think any less of you. Whatever happened in that warehouse…that doesn't change the fact that I love you, and I always will. What you tell me isn't going to change that," he said. He was just as emotional as she was, but his emotions were untainted by fear, quite possibly because they had just spilled out of his silver-tongued mouth. He hadn't really had time to think about what he was going to say, which is probably why he said it.

His speech had been meant to calm her fears, but her face wasn't reflecting the calm that he had hoped for. Instead, the tears that had been in her eyes spilled over. But after a moment, during which neither of them had been breathing, she smiled. To an outsider, the moment was anything but beautiful; with tears, snot inevitably follows. Her eyes were red, and her face blotchy. He was too tense; if someone poked him, he might have shattered into a million pieces. But that would have been okay, because Pepper was smiling at him, and that meant that he could pick himself back up.

"You love me." It wasn't a question. His statement was just a declaration of something that they had both known. It took both of them entirely too long to figure it out, but somehow, they got there. And that meant that, somehow, everything would turn out alright in the end, because apparently, according to popular belief, all you need is love.

"Yeah, I do. It's 'cause you're kind of special. My special Pepper Potts," he said, his voice tender and full of pride.

"Yeah? You're kind of special, too. Really special. I love you, too, kind of special," she choked out. He smiled back at her and gently took her hand. He wasn't oblivious to the fact that not all the fear was gone from her eyes, or the increased beeping of her heart monitor, but she was smiling, and she loved him. He raised her broken hand to his lips, and kissed it gently. He darned not do more. Pepper inhaled sharply, but kept smiling, determined not to let an irrational fear keep her from basking in this moment. His hand was still wrapped around hers, and she pulled it to her lips and returned the gesture.

"You're still afraid," he said quietly, his voice matter-of-fact.

"Not of you. Never of you."

"That's good, because I think that I'm going to be around for a while."

"I think I would be okay with that," Pepper whispered, closing her eyes, caught up in the overwhelming near-perfection of the moment.

"Good, because if you weren't—"

"You would be…you, and force me into being okay with it."

"Force? I don't really like that term. I was thinking, you know, that maybe, 'persuade' is a better term…"

There was laughter from the room late into the night that even the fearless Phyllis dared not break up. Eventually, though, it faded to silence. When Phyllis checked in on them, Pepper was asleep in the bed, and Tony had pulled two chairs together into a makeshift bed right beside her so that he didn't have to let go of her hand.

* * *

_Derrick was straddling her, bathing her face with some unidentified yellow liquid. The smell alone was enough to burn her nostrils, and when he pressed it to her face, there was wave upon wave of pain. It was colorful: red and orange and green. It was also so intense it was funny. She laughed hysterically at the sheer nonsensicalness of the overwhelming pain. Pain shouldn't be red, and especially not green. Green was a cool color and this pain was definitely sharp and burning._

_She could hear the hiss of burning flesh, and it took her all of half a second to realize that it was her face that was burning. Her hands, seemingly of their own accord, flew to her face, clawing, as if they could pull the pain away. Instead, they just tore the sensitive skin. Her hands, finding only more pain, stopped, and she studied them for a moment. They were red and bloody and holding large flakes of something thin, and pale, and a bit like wet paper._

_"My skin. My skin…"_

"Pepper!" "Miss Potts?" "C'mon Pepper, wake up!" "Miss Potts, you're having a nightmare…" There were two voices, both familiar, that were, thankfully, pulling her out of her nightmare world. Nightmares weren't an uncommon occurrence for her. Though she would never tell Tony, she had, on numerous occasions, had nightmares pertaining to his capture in Afghanistan. Upon waking, she always had Jarvis erase the security footage of them. But now, they were definitely different, and definitely getting worse.

"Miss Potts, are you alright?" the day nurse asked. She and Tony were both standing over her bed, expressions full of concern. The nurse, however, looked slightly more in control of her emotions than Tony did. Tony was worried for Pepper, but he was also looking murderous. She didn't like that expression on him; it looked wrong. He should be smiling, or intent and working on a project, but not murderous.

"Pepper, are you okay?" he asked, his voice a thousand times more gentle than his expression. She nodded, and focused on trying to get her breathing under control. Her sheets were wrapped around her from thrashing about during the nightmare, and she was covered in cold sweat. She felt absolutely disgusting; a combination of the sweat and the nightmare.

"I'm fine. I feel disgusting, but otherwise, fine."

"Are you positive?" The nurse and Tony asked simultaneously.

"Haven't you heard? Only fools are positive," she said teasingly, hoping to lighten the mood.

"Again, Pepper, a memo that I never got. I think you've been slacking off on your job," Tony replied, taking the bait.

"No, I'm pretty sure that was another one of those e-mails that you deleted."

"How sure are you about that? Are you positive?"

"Not exactly, hence the phrase "I'm pretty sure."

"Well, Miss Potts, I'm pretty sure that it's almost time for you to see the therapist that Dr. Phair has assigned to you," the nurse piped up. Pepper had been dreading this all week, but she tried to use the countdown to her appointment as a positive thing. Yes, she had to talk to the psychologist, but afterwards, she would be able to go home. She was hoping that a return home, to more familiar surroundings and a more normal routine would make the nightmares fade.

"Right. Tony, did you bring me my suit?" she asked.

"Of course." As he spoke, he produced a garment bag which held one of her black skirt suits. He had also brought a black ballet flat and some of her toiletries from the house. Pepper had decided that if she was going to have to go talk about the incident, that she would armed with her suit. She hoped that it would make her feel like she was on equal footing with the doctor. Also, she didn't want to leave the hospital in sweats and have the press paint her as the perfect damsel in distress. She was also feeling less like one because she had gotten her Blackberry back and was able to do some work.

_You are a strong, capable woman, Pepper, who is perfectly able to handle a single therapy session. Stay calm, don't despair, and you'll come out of it just fine._

"Okay, Tony, you need to run into the office and take care of some paperwork. Fujikawa, Inc. just faxed over some marketing ideas. They've been approved by our marketing department, and just need your seal of approval. By the time you get there, look over them, and get back, I will be ready to go," she said, her voice crisp. The businesslike Pepper that he knew was back, but with a softer edge when she spoke to him. He nodded, knowing that she had an idea of the image that she wanted to project today, and he was going to help her do it.

"I can do that. If you need anything, call. You know that." She nodded, and he kissed her gently on the forehead. "Remember, anything at all—"

"I'll call."

"I love you," he whispered in her ear, so that only she could hear. The sentiment was too intimate for someone else to hear. It was between them, and he was trying to keep it that way.

"You too. I'll see you this afternoon." Then he left the room. As soon as he was gone, Pepper sprang into action. Well, sprang isn't really the proper term, because she felt like she was going a snail's pace. She managed to get into her suit, but buttoning the buttons was still very difficult. She also had the nurse pull up her hair into a bun, which she couldn't manage on her own just yet. Not much could be done about her face, and she didn't really trust anyone else to put her makeup on her, so she would just have to go without. By the time she was finished dressing, it was time for her the therapist to be there. Luckily, the therapist was coming to Pepper, which made it easier for her to control her surroundings. Pepper sat in a chair, her legs crossed, and waited.

A few minutes later, the therapist arrived. She was a short woman who looked more like a librarian than a psychologist. She was wearing a suit, very similar to the one Pepper was wearing, with red, peep-toe pumps. It was the glasses, however, that screamed 'librarian.' She stood straight, and held herself with an air that Pepper recognized: professionalism.

"Hello, I'm Dr. Connelly. You must be Pepper Potts," she said, offering her hand. Pepper smiled and shook it lightly. Dr. Connelly took a seat on the sofa and immediately got down to business. "So, your doctors tell me that they are concerned about your reactions to physical contact. This isn't uncommon after what you've experienced. Can you tell me about that?"

She couldn't help it. Despite her extreme dislike about having to do this, she found herself liking this woman. She was very professional, and she didn't seem to be snobbish. Yes, this woman made her want to tell her everything.

"I…I don't mean to pull away, my body just reacts that way. In my head, I know that they aren't going to hurt me, but my body still has to readjust to the idea. He…Derrick James, the man who…tortured—" _It's strange, you're relieved at saying the word, Pepper._ "me…he didn't always hurt me. Sometimes he would hold my hand, or stroke my hair."

"He behaved more like a lover than a captor," the doctor suggested.

"Yes, that's it exactly. And somehow, he had gotten his hands on one of Tony's—my boss—shirts, and he would wear it. He would hold me and smell just like Tony, and I wanted it to be him, but it wasn't. Then he would hurt me again, still smelling like Tony."

Dr. Connelly was jotting notes furiously on her notepad, but her face was very sympathetic. "Miss Potts—"

"Pepper."

"Pepper, have you ever heard of the concept of conditioning?"

"I remember studying it briefly in psych 101 in college, but I don't really remember much else," she admitted.

"You know about Pavlov's dogs? How he trained them to salivate at the sound of a bell?" Pepper nodded. "Basically, Derrick James did the same thing to you. He would wear the shirt, which smelled like your boss, and behave in a way that is very similar to that of a lover. Then, he would hurt you. This conditioned you, subconsciously, to expect pain when you smell that smell or when someone tries to comfort you," she explained patiently.

"So what do I do about it?"

"Basically, you're going to have to recondition yourself. You have to begin to associate good things with physical contact again. A very simple example, you essentially get a gold star for tolerating the contact without a strong withdrawal. You have to reward yourself in someway for not pulling away. I don't think I have to remind you that you're in the company of people that you love, and that love you. They aren't going to hurt you," Dr. Connelly explained.

"In my head, I know that. I just…my body has to catch up with my head."

"I understand that. And it's going to take you a while to get over that. I'm surprised that you're even able to talk about it. For someone who has been through a prolonged captivity, you're doing remarkably well. Is there anything else you would like to ask me about?"

"I've been having nightmares. I think some of it is an affect of the drug that he gave me. Is there anything I can do for that?"

"Are they recurring? I mean, are they the same nightmare or are they different?"

"Sometimes they're the same, sometimes they're different. I had nightmares before, but it wasn't nearly as frequent, and they were about different things," Pepper explained.

"When you have recurring nightmares, they are caused by repeated brain activity. In plain speak, your brain activity is exactly the same when you're nightmares are the same. Sleeping pills will give you a temporary reprieve, but they also have a very high risk of dependency. Try to relax before going to bed. Take a hot bath, read a book, something like that. You can take melatonin, which will help regulate your sleep patterns. Also, chamomile tea will help you sleep as well."

"I have some tea at home, and I'm sure there's some melatonin around there somewhere. Thank you, Dr. Connelly."

"There is one other thing I want to talk to you about. I know that you probably don't want to talk about it, but I also think that I should ask, because these sorts of things have a very profound effect on some people. Taking a life is something that changes a person—"

"Taking a life?" Pepper asked.

"Gregory Lane," Dr. Connelly said, as though she expected Pepper to know exactly what she was talking about. Realizing that Pepper didn't, she clarified. "The police found evidence that in your struggle to keep from being captured, you stabbed Lane in the neck with your heel."

"David…one of my captors, told me that I had killed his brother, but I didn't really believe him. I mean, I guess I did, but the idea seems so surreal to me."

"Why?"

"Well, it was dark when I was kidnapped. I couldn't really see what was happening. And, honestly, I'm a personal assistant. My boss is Iron Man. He's the one that goes out and fights and all that sort of thing. Of the two of us, he's far more likely to have killed someone than I am."

"But you did. It was in self-defense and no one can blame you for that."

"I don't like that I took a human life, in self-defense or not. They were trying to kidnap me, though, which resulted in my torture, so I suppose I don't…It wouldn't be right for me to say that I don't feel bad, because I do. But I'm also very glad that I'm alive."

"Again, if you were telling me that you didn't have any mixed emotions, I would be concerned. Truth be told, Miss Potts, you're handling all of this very, very well."

"Thank you. It's nice to hear you say that."

Their conversation was interrupted by a knock on the door, which startled both women. Happy and Tony were standing in the doorway, grinning from ear to ear. Pepper didn't realize that they had been talking for so long. It was amazing how the right psychologist had managed to turn something that she had been dreading into something useful. That was a testament to Dr. Connelly's skill.

"Dr. Connelly, I have come to take your patient home," Tony said.

"Wait, you know her?" Pepper asked. As far back as she could remember, the two had never met.

"I got a call three days ago from your boss asking me to come speak with you. He said you were dreading the whole affair, and was looking for someone to make it easier for you," Dr. Connelly explained.

"Dr. Connelly has a reputation for being one of the best. _The _best, actually, so I flew her in from the big city of Gotham on the East Coast."

"I hope it wasn't any trouble—" Pepper started.

"Trust me, it was no trouble at all. You're world famous, and the very fact that you survived this at all made me absolutely dying to talk to you. It was a great pleasure."

"And you, too," Pepper said.

"If you need anything, call. I can't hop a flight out here, but I can give you some recommendations if you need them," she said. Tony, Happy, and Pepper all nodded their good-byes as she left the room. Everything went quickly from there. All of her stuff was packed up, and discharge papers were signed. Because of hospital policy, Pepper was not allowed to walk out of the hospital; instead, Tony pushed her out to the waiting car, through the crowd of reporters, all willing to give their first born son for the first picture of Pepper Potts after her traumatic experience.

"How does it feel to survive a week of torture?" "It is true that you had to have extensive facial reconstruction surgery?" "Is it true that you're a bottle red head?" "How does it feel to be Tony Stark's damsel in distress?" "Is there any truth to the love child rumors?"

Ignoring them all, they made it quickly to the car. Happy drove them home, and all the paparazzi were left at the gate. It was slow going, getting her out of the car, but she managed it alone. The steps leading to the front door, however, were something else entirely.

"I could carry you," Tony suggested. They both knew that it was going to completely exhaust her to try and walk up all those stairs. She nodded, and he picked her up gently, trying to avoid her ribs, which were still healing. He could see the concentration on her face as she tried not to tense up and jerk away. When she didn't, they both smiled. He opened the door and carried her across the threshold in very romantic style.

"Welcome home, Miss Potts," he said. Her only answer was to lay her head against his chest and sigh contentedly.

* * *

**Author's Note: **So there's chapter nine. I hope you enjoyed reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it. Also, as a side note, Dr. Connelly is a central character in my Batman story, if you're interested. I like to kind of borrow characters from my stories like that. Anyway, if you've made it this far, you've read. Please review, let me know what you think, ect.


	10. Confession

**Author's Note: **So, here is chapter 10. I hope you enjoy it. It was...interesting for me to write, so feedback is always appreciated.

* * *

They were settling into a routine nicely. Pepper was making arrangements to have her apartment remodeled, which both encouraged and disappointed Tony. If she was remodeling it, that was a sign that she was planning to move back into it, something that Tony was not really looking forward to. However, it also gave her something to do, and she seemed to enjoy it, and a smiling Pepper was always a good thing. She had leapt right back into the swing of things, so to speak. There wasn't actually much leaping going on, per say, but if she could based simply on strength of will, she would.

Pepper had settled into her bedroom, though she did rearrange the furniture a bit. It was just a little too similar to her bedroom at home, which was far too similar to the room that Derrick had created to torture her with. So she had the bed moved so that it was beneath the large bay window. She traded in the short valances above the windows for longer, to-the-floor curtains. Maybe one day she would push open the window and let some fresh air in; the idea of the curtains flapping in the breeze brought a beautifully peaceful image to mind. She had also had her books from her apartment brought over, and put into a new bookcase in her bedroom. Tony had volunteered to replace all the furniture, or to knock out some walls and redo the room completely, but Pepper insisted that only the furniture be rearranged.

The only thing that truly remained unsettled were Tony's sleeping arrangements. He didn't want to stray too far from Pepper's side, but he also didn't want to crowd her and make her nervous. Pepper wanted things to be as normal as possible, but that was more difficult than either of them had imagined. Over the course of the whole affair, their dynamic had changed. Perhaps it shouldn't have, considering that they had been in love with each other all along, but confessing it and having it out in the open, between the two of them, anyway, had changed things. It wasn't hard during the day. They bantered like they always had, and ate lunch together; they did all the things that they did before. But when it came time to go to bed, things got a little fuzzy.

The problem wasn't that they didn't want to sleep together. The problem was that they definitely did. But Pepper was still in pain, and Tony didn't want to push his limits. He still didn't know why she responded the way she did to him, but until he knew, he didn't really want to try anything. He was just going to have to trust Pepper to open up to him when she was ready.

Their first night in the house had been a study in patience. Neither one of them had wanted to go to sleep. Instead, they lingered on the sofa in the living room with the television on. They sat calculatedly close; they were just close enough that her leg would brush against his every now and again. He was itching to pull her against him and kiss her, but he refrained. As the evening wore on, and Pepper got more and more tired, she began to lean more on Tony. He would have been lying if he said he didn't enjoy it. She sighed lightly, and breathed in his smell. He felt her tense beside him, and he moved to put more space between them.

"No," she had said, and pulled him closer. She rested her head against his shoulder, and took in his smell again. Memories of Derrick flashed through her mind, but she tried to push it aside.

"Pepper, stop," Tony had said as he put a little more space between them. She looked confused and disappointed. "You're tensing up. I don't want you to be uncomfortable."

"I'm not uncomfortable."

"Then why are you so tense?"

She was at a loss for words. Internally, she had cursed herself for thinking that she could hide anything from Tony, even thought it wasn't a good idea to do so. She just wanted things to be normal…easy. Retraining herself wasn't going to be easy, and though she had no objections to hard work [obviously], she wished that, for once, it would be.

"Pepper, trust me, I definitely want to…but I also don't want you to be uncomfortable." She had sighed, frustration evident all over her face. Her exhaustion had been quite clear also. As much as she wanted things to be easy, Tony wanted just as much to make things easy for her. But they both knew that it was far more complicated than that. "It's late, and you're exhausted. You should go to bed."

"Since when have you been the responsible one?" she asked.

"Didn't you tell me once that even I would have to grow up?"

"Did I? You don't have to. You can be the exception," she said, her voice slightly sad. She wasn't sad that he had "grown up," so to speak. She knew that his time in Afghanistan had changed him profoundly, but he still had some of that childhood innocence about him. She hadn't seen any of that since she woke up in the hospital. He was still easy-going, but…he wasn't the same, and she hated that her condition was part of what had taken that from him.

"Well, my inner eight year old is telling me that it's past our bedtime," Tony responded, rising to his feet. He offered his hands to Pepper, who gratefully accepted his help without pulling away.

_That's it, Pepper. See, it's just Tony. Tony isn't going to hurt you._

Having several broken fingers made it very hard for Pepper to use crutches, and Tony was only happy to step and substitute. He made eye contact, his expression asking permission. She nodded shyly, and he put an arm around her waist to help her to her bedroom. It was a longer journey than either of them liked, but eventually, it ended with him helping Pepper sit at the foot of her bed. She had already laid out her pajamas at the foot of the bed: a simple oversized t-shirt and striped cotton pants.

"Are you going to be alright?" Tony asked hesitantly. He hated asking that question. He was sure that she was tired of him asking that every time she blinked, but he also wanted to make sure that she was alright. It was nothing new for Pepper to patch him up when he needed it, but now the shoe was on the other foot. He was trying to take care of her, and, truth be told, he wasn't sure that he was very good at it. Try as he might, he couldn't keep his eyes from wandering to her bed and wondering what it would be like to be there with her. This didn't escape her notice.

"I'll be fine. Thanks." She had studied her sock-clad feet rather intently. He kissed her forehead lightly and turned to leave. "Tony," she called after him. He froze and turned to face her, his face hopeful. "One day I will invite you to my bed. I'm just…not ready yet, as much as I would like to be."

He crossed the room and took her hand gently. He raised it to his lips and placed a chaste kiss on her knuckles, just as he had done in her hospital room. This time, he brought her hand to the side of his face. Unfortunately, he felt the slight twitch of her fingers and knew that he had overstepped his bounds. He let go of her hand, but not so suddenly that it would feel like a rejection to her. Still, the disappointment in her face was obvious.

"Pepper, don't. Don't be disappointed in yourself. You are doing absolutely amazing. You're wanting to run before you crawl…or walk, really. It's going to take time—"

"I know. Everyone's been overly eager to tell me that."

"And they're right. Do you remember what you told me the night before you were kidnapped?" She shook her head. "You told me not to give in to despair. You were joking…but still, you've got to take your own advice. You're getting upset because you think you aren't making the progress that you should be, but…you can't give in to despair by being down on yourself. Instead, go to bed, get some sleep, and tomorrow, you'll be a day closer." She was silent for a long moment, studying her feet again. Then she nodded.

"You definitely grew up."

"Not really," he answered quickly. "It really depends on the day of the week. I'm thinking you should get to sleep, because this kid wants to be up bright and early to play with his favorite shiny toy, and maybe a little bit of detective, too. He is definitely going to need some supervision." She couldn't help but laugh at his enthusiasm. "Can you get dressed alright?"

"If you could just undo the buttons on my cuffs, I can get the rest." He quickly undid the buttons, and took her hands again.

"If you need anything—"

"I know. Good night. I love you," she said, kissing his knuckles. He smiled, and knelt in front of her to be on her level. He reached for her face, but stopped at the last minute.

"May I?" he asked quietly. She bit her lip and nodded. He gently touched her cheek, and laid a light kiss there. This time, she didn't tense, but instead, she shivered. "I love you, too. Sleep tight." He slowly exited the room, a grin on his face. He went to his bedroom, pulled on some sweats and climbed into bed. Knowing that Pepper was under his roof made him sleep easier.

"Jarvis, wake me up if she's in distress."

By the time Jarvis responded with his typical "Will do, sir," Tony was fast asleep.

* * *

Tony didn't sleep very much for the first few weeks. Jarvis would wake him at all hours of the night to inform him that Miss Potts was experiencing distress. This caused the change in his sleeping arrangements. Sometimes, he started out in his own bed. Other times, he fell asleep in his workshop. He had, on occasion, slept in a chair in Pepper's room, but usually, no matter where he started out, he ended up in the room next door to Pepper's. That's where he was when Jarvis woke him, telling him that Pepper was upset and had shut herself in the bathroom. Tony flew from the bed and into her bedroom, only to hear the bathtub running.

Her nightmares weren't fading away like they had hoped, and Pepper, who could be just as stubborn as he could, didn't want to take her sleeping pills. It didn't really help that he was noticing a trend. On the nights that he didn't escort her to her bedroom, the nightmares came later in the night, and were less severe than when he would tuck her in and kiss her goodnight. The nights that he spent in his workshop or his bedroom were fairly similar. It was when he was closer to her that the nightmares intensified, as if it were a subconscious thing. She was picking up on his nearness, and it was making her nightmares worse. Despite all this, she liked it when he escorted her to bed, and he wasn't going to deny her anything.

"Pepper? Are you alright?" he called through the bathroom door.

"I'm fine."

"You don't sound fine."

"Please, Tony, I'm fine."

"You're not selling it, Pepper. On the count of three, I'm coming in."

"Tony, I'm naked! You can't come in!" The sixteen year old, hormonal boy in his head sprang to life.

"That's sounds like a very serious emergency, Miss Potts. I really think that I should come in. On the count of three. One…two…"

"Tony!"

"Three!" Instead of pushing the door open, he called, "Are you ready?" He had heard her sigh in frustration as she tried to get things in order before he came in.

"You can come in now," she answered grudgingly. He slowly opened the door and was highly amused at what he found. She had pulled the shower curtain closed, but her black-casted foot was poking out from beneath the curtain, propped over the side of the tub. He couldn't hold back a laugh. On the other side of the curtain, he could hear Pepper laughing.

"If you knew how ridiculous this looked…" Tony started.

"I'm sure it looks just as ridiculous from this side."

"No, I'm sure the view in there is great," he said suggestively. Pepper fell silent, but Tony knew that she was blushing to the roots of her red hair. "Are you alright?"

"Yeah…it was just another nightmare."

"Was it the same one that you've been having?"

"Yeah, but…don't worry about it. I'm fine."

"Then why are you in the bathtub with the shower curtain pulled closed?"

"Because I'm _naked_!"

"You're in the tub because you're naked?"

"I was sweating. It made me feel disgusting," she said quietly.

"The sweat or the nightmare?" he asked, knowing exactly how she felt. Nightmares had a way of leaving a sour taste in his mouth, and left his skin crawling. He imagined that it was the same for Pepper.

"The nightmare. It makes my skin crawl. It makes me feel…dirty. Hence the bath."

"Can I see your face, please?" She carefully pulled back the shower curtain to reveal her tear-stained face. He smiled at her. "Is there anything you need me to do?"

"You could get me some new pajamas and put them on the counter." He quickly did so, without another word, and then sat patiently on the bed to wait for her. Rustling noises coming from the bathroom had told him that she was coming, but it was slow going. She finally emerged, hobbling so as to not put weight on her leg. He helped her into bed, but, as much as he would like to join her there, he only sat on the edge.

"Did you take a sleeping pill?" he asked. She shook her head.

"I was hoping that being home would make the nightmares go away." He rose and went into the bathroom, and emerged with one of her sleeping pills. She took it, but didn't really want to. "They have a high risk of dependency."

"I know. But you need the sleep. Remember, this little boy's going sleuthing in the morning." He kissed her gently on the cheek again before rising. "I'll be right next door. Good night. I love you." She smiled at him, and he left the room.

The next morning, Pepper awoke bright and early and dressed quickly. Because of her broken fingers, small buttons still weren't a very viable option. So instead of her usual button-down white shirt, she wore a white shell tank top, which she normally wouldn't consider wearing for work. She had recovered enough in the past weeks that she didn't need her crutches anymore. She made her way down to the kitchen, and turned on the coffee pot.

"Jarvis, where is Tony?"

"He is in his workshop."

"Thank you." She walked to the top of the stairs that led down to Tony's workshop. Since stairs were incredibly slow going, she called down to him. "Tony!"

"I'll be right up!" he called back. She sat on the sofa at the top of the stairs waiting on him. He was true to his word. He was up the stairs in a flash, dressed and ready to go. He kissed her lightly on the cheek. "How did you sleep?"

"Pretty well."

"Good. Now, I've started looking into the schedules of my board members, and Jarvis is going to put them up here…" The schedules quickly appeared on the smart glass, and Pepper studied them the best she could. She would need to do an in-depth review of the schedules, but it seemed, at first glance, that everything was normal. Of course, they were board members who had quite a lot of power, so she wasn't sure how much of their schedule was doctored for show. Several of them were known to spend a few too many hours on the golf course.

"They seem relatively ordinary. I'll check them against my scheduled stuff to make sure that the hours they have written in are right. Is there some way that we can check to see if they did what they say that they did?"

"We have security footage," Tony suggested.

"That's a lot to watch."

"We could have Jarvis scan through it." Even as he said it, he wasn't very satisfied with the idea. Pepper was right; it would be hours of watching, and while Jarvis was damn near perfect, he wanted to do this himself. Jarvis wouldn't be able to pick up on all the little nuances of these people's behavior just from security footage. He also wouldn't be able to detect heartbeat or respiration, which cut down on his effectiveness.

"What about our ID cards?" Pepper suggested. "We have to swipe them before we can go into each department, and then again to access projects or research. All that information has to be logged somewhere. It would at least have a more general idea of where our board members were. Then we could use the security footage to pinpoint exact locations."

Tony grinned from ear to ear. Brilliant. She was completely brilliant. Without thinking, he kissed her on the tip of the nose. Instead of the withdrawal he was expecting, she leaned closer to him. In his head, he knew that she was probably making herself do this, but the fact that she didn't tense up at all was…wonderful. She was smiling, too, and he could tell that it was genuine.

"I knew there was a reason I hired you," he teased. "You're brilliant…and you have great legs."

"Because great legs make me oh-so-qualified," she deadpanned. His smile broadened. They had discovered a means to an end that allowed them to bypass Derrick James, master psychopath. Pepper felt hope rising within her. For the first time since she had been found, she felt that there really was a chance that they could discover who was behind all this mess. They had a plan of action that could actually be executed by the two of them…and Jarvis. It was going to be hard work, but all things worth having required hard work, and she definitely wanted to find the person or persons behind all of it.

"No, but they were a great bonus." Pepper began to pull herself off the sofa to go get a cup of coffee, but Tony stopped her. He quickly exited the living room and returned with two cups of coffee. Pepper took hers carefully with her left hand; each fingertip was wrapped carefully by a band-aid. It was her first cup of coffee in weeks, and she was determined to savor it. The first of the liquid hit her tongue, and she sighed contentedly. It was amazing.

"This is good…I missed coffee."

"I've missed your coffee."

"It's just coffee, Tony. All you do is scoop it into the coffee maker and press a button. Now, I do believe, Mr. Stark, that you have some things to attend to at the office. Jarvis tells me that the Department of Defense has been trying to get a hold of you—probably not the best idea to ignore the government, considering that they are your biggest customer—"

"I'll go into the office and take care of it. It won't take long. While I'm gone, have Jarvis pull up those key card records—"

"I know. While he's pulling up records, I'll compare their schedules to schedules that I have recorded. Now, shoo. Go."

Tony quickly dressed in a suit for work and headed towards Stark Industries. Pepper got her laptop and settled herself on the sofa, carefully comparing schedules. She spent the better part of the day pouring over things, only to find that nothing appeared to be amiss in what they had reported. They were spending entirely too much time on the golf course, but, they had told their secretaries that was where they were going to be. She cursed under her breath.

_You should have known that it wasn't going to be that easy, Pepper. But there's still more. Start with the ID cards and see what you can find. Remember, don't give in to despair. You'll find who did this…_

"Jarvis, do you have the logs for the key cards yet?"

"I have the logs for all of the board members. I also found the ones for Derrick James, and the Benson brothers."

"Thank you Jarvis. I would like you search for times when any of them were in the office at the same time that Derrick James and the Lane—um, Benson brothers were working, please."

Jarvis immediately set to the task that she had laid before him. Pepper sat down on the sofa to wait for him to finish. As she sat, she let her eyes slip shut, just for a minute. She had been lying when she told Tony that she slept well, and she was going to do the best she could to keep him from knowing. It would just be a short nap…

_Derrick set the small stainless steel bowl on the floor next to her, and straddled her. She continued to try to fight him off, but he was so heavy and she was so tired…He dipped the white cloth into the bowl, and began to wipe away at her face. She shook her head violently, desperate to get him off of her so that she could be free again. Freedom. She wanted to be free, and she wanted to be with Tony._

"_Stop! Stop it!" she shouted, half hoping that she was hurting his ears. She pushed against him with all her strength, but it __**hurt**__ so bad she couldn't sustain any type of resistance. She sagged against him and he continued to wipe the vinegar against her face. _

_She waited for the sizzle of melting flesh, as that was always what followed in these situations. The pain was burning, but not as harsh as what she had grown accustomed to. She reached up and touched her face, expecting the flesh to fall away from her skull, but it didn't. As if to speed things along, he grabbed her and started shaking her, hard. She couldn't help the scream that passed her lips. Her head pounded against the wall, and everything started to fade to black…it was alright, though. Tony was calling her name…_

"Pepper! Pepper, wake up!"

She jolted awake, covered in sweat, as per usual with her nightmares. Tony was leaning over her, his hands on her shoulders. As soon as she was awake, he jerked his hands away, afraid of her reaction. She just lay there for a moment, trying to get her bearings. After a few minutes, she sat up, and Tony sat beside her, but was sure to give her plenty of space.

"What happened?" she asked, even though she already knew the answer.

"I came home from the office and you were asleep. I know you haven't been sleeping well lately, so wanted to let you sleep. I got distracted looking over the ID logs, and before I knew it, you were having a nightmare. Are you—"

"Please don't finish that sentence. I'm fine, I promise." Tony was silent for a long minute. Her face was pale, which made the scar on her forehead stand out even more. "Have you found anything useful?"

"Not yet. I haven't gotten to look at all of it yet. It's quite a lot of stuff we've got to look over."

"I need a bath," Pepper said. She rose from the sofa and began walking to her bathroom. She needed to help Tony, and she knew it. She wanted to know who the hell it was that had her tortured, and she felt guilty for sleeping the afternoon away. "The bath can wait, how much do we have left?"

"It's late, Pepper. I can have Jarvis narrow the search further and start scanning security video. I'll do that while you're getting cleaned up." Tony went back to looking things over and Pepper headed to the bathroom. It had been a long few weeks. They had been watching the board members carefully, but they hadn't been able to notice anything suspicious. Of course, they had been getting away with all this for God only knows how long, so things were probably a well-oiled machine.

Pepper bathed quickly. Baths used to be a thing of luxury, but not anymore. As soon as she got the cast off, she was going to take a shower, and enjoy every minute of it. But for now, she bathed with her foot propped on the side of the tub. She quickly bathed and washed her hair. She didn't bother with a blow dryer…it was just going to go up in a bun in the morning anyway. She pulled on a long nightgown and a bathrobe before going to join Tony in the living room.

Halfway there she ran into him in the hallway. He was clad in lounge pants and an MIT t-shirt, his hair tousled in just the right way. He grinned at her and took her hand as they walked towards her bedroom. She climbed into bed and he sat on the edge, as had become customary for them.

"Did you take your sleeping pill?" Tony asked. Pepper gave him a look. It said "did you really need to ask me that question when you know the answer already?" "Pepper, you need to—"

"There is a very high risk of dependency, and when I come off them, the nightmares are just going to be worse."

"Is there anything you need me to do?"

This exchange had become customary for them as well. Whenever he escorted her to bed, he always asked her if she had taken her sleeping pill, if there was anything he could do, and then he would tell her that if she needed anything, just to have Jarvis get him. Pepper, of course, usually hadn't taken the sleeping pill, didn't need him to do anything, and always knew that she could call him for anything. Then he would kiss her on the cheek or the hand, tell her that he loved her, and leave the room. So imagine his surprise when she changed up the routine on him.

"Could you…would you stay with me tonight?" she asked. She had been pondering the idea all day. She still flinched occasionally, but she had recently started doing better. And she owed Tony an explanation. He had been waiting, sometimes patiently, sometimes not, for an explanation, and if she trusted him enough to let him into her bed, she would trust him enough to tell him everything.

The shock of her forward suggestion showed on his face. He was still and silent for a long moment before he spoke. When he finally did, his voice was gentle. "Pepper, I don't really know that this is a good idea…yet. Your nightmares are worse when I'm near." His face was more than unsure…it was sad. Pepper knew that she couldn't allow that. She couldn't allow him to be sad because of her, especially since she had just extended an invitation for something that he had wanted so badly.

She reached out and cupped his face with her hands. Luckily, she didn't have those horrible splints on her fingers anymore. "Perhaps it's because you're not near enough," she suggested just as gently. He still looked unsure, but he climbed into the other side of the bed, not daring to come too close. Instead of letting him keep his distance, she lessened the space between them and took his hands in hers. He didn't protest.

"How much do you want to know?" she asked.

"Whatever you want to tell me." He could see the apprehension in her eyes, but he stayed firmly where he was. She had decided that she was going to tell him things, and he was going to respect her decision. Besides, he was finally with her. She had invited him into her bed, and that in itself was amazing to him. He could smell her all around him, and it comforted him, just as his nearness was comforting to her.

"I guess they must have been waiting in my apartment for me, because I went to go to bed, and they attacked me. I don't really remember everything…just that I was yelling and trying to make a lot of noise. They were trying to hold me down to give me a sedative, but I kept fighting, and I remember kicking when they were holding me down in the bedroom. I guess that when I must have killed—" Her voice broke on the word—"Gregory Lane. There was a lot of blood, but it was dark, so I didn't really register that he was dying. I scrambled towards the kitchen, but my heel broke and I fell through my coffee table…" She trailed off, lost in thought.

He could see her sorting through details in her head, as if she were only now coming to grips with it. She needed this, he realized, just as he did. Just as he wanted to know what she had been through, she needed to share it with him. She was laying down the burden and letting him help her carry it. The enormity of the moment was not lost on him.

"Take your time," he whispered running his thumbs over her knuckles, trying to soothe her.

"When I woke up, the room was really cold and I was alone. I think…I think that was the worst part: waking up alone. Derrick came in and he was so conversational, like he wasn't about to tor—torture information out of me. He had this bowl of vinegar, and he used it to clean my face—" She saw Tony cringe.

"Which hurt like hell," he whispered.

"A bit."

"Don't do that. Don't sugar coat it for me. Just give it to me straight. I need to know what you went through in there. What I said still applies. I'm not going to think any less of you if you tell me that it hurt so much you thought you were going to die. You're my Pepper…nothing's going to change that." She was silent for a moment before words started tumbling out of her mouth.

"At first, I thought it hurt like hell, but I'm thinking that hell is relative. Because after that, he just talked to me some more, like absolutely nothing was wrong. He talked about you and he guessed how I got the name Pepper. I didn't like that. I didn't like it when he said your name…it was like he was tainting anything he talked about. He would touch me…he wasn't always so horrible. There were times when he would comfort me, usually right after he hit me or something. He would hold my hand or stroke my hair. I think it was the worst when he wore one of your shirts—"

"He had one of my shirts?" Tony demanded. The idea that Derrick had tortured her using something of his…well, rage was an understatement. Of course, rage wasn't quite the right word to describe his relatively well-controlled reaction to what she was telling him.

"Yeah. Don't worry, we're using a new dry cleaner." The fact that she had been so practical about it…it made him smile. It confirmed that she was definitely still the same Pepper that he had always known. Level-headed and perfectly able to handle any crisis that came her way. And kind. Had he been the one who found out that someone had bribed his dry-cleaner…well, it would be all over but the crying…and the jail time.

"He wore the shirt and would hold me, and he smelled like you. It was so wrong, because you're good and warm and _Tony_, and he was so cold. Like he had never been happy a day in his life. A man like that shouldn't smell like _you. _ He did that after he pulled my fingernails off. Thank God he didn't take the nail bed. That was when 'hurts like hell' really became relative. It was…the pain was colorful and blinding, but what made it worse was that he tried to rationalize it all, like what he was doing was okay."

"That's why you're so sensitive to me. Because he smelled like me," Tony said, unable to keep his seething hatred from coming through in his voice.

"Tony, did you really study a picture of him?" she asked, realizing that he obviously hadn't. She shook his head. "He was about 5' 11" and very well-built with dark features. His hair was just long enough to fall across his forehead. He wore a meticulously trimmed goatee…that sound familiar?"

And then it hit him. That son of a bitch had gone out of his way to look like him. He had made himself into a Tony Stark look alike, just to make things harder on Pepper. Tony forced himself to let go a Pepper's hands, and his clenched into fists as he tried to control his rage. He had been used to strike fear in an undeserving target…Derrick James had trained Pepper to be afraid of him…the idea sickened him.

"He made you fear me. That's why you've been reacting so strongly. Oh my…Pepper, it's a miracle you're even sane."

"Tony, I've always known that you wouldn't hurt me. I know that in my head, and in my heart. I just had to retrain my body to follow."

"Tell me about the drug. How did that work?"

"He put it in my food, which I was stupid enough to eat. It made everything so fuzzy. My thoughts were racing, and I couldn't control them. It's like…they were buzzing back and forth in my head, too fast for me to catch one and hold onto it. But I did. I got away after he gave me the drug. I hit him with a drawer and managed to escape. I made it to a fire escape before the drug made me pass out again," she finished.

"And that's where I found you," he whispered. She nodded. "You're not going to have to escape ever again, and I'm not gonna have to find you. You're staying here. With me." He wanted to take her into his arms and tell her that he wasn't going to let anything hurt her ever again, but he didn't. He waited for her to make the first move, because he sure as hell didn't want her to feel like she was back with that psychopath again. No, he was going to do this the right way.

"That's pretty okay with me," she said. She reached out and took his face in her hands, running her fingers over his cheeks, his brow, his nose. It was as if she were memorizing his face with her hands, imprinting it in her mind. He closed his eyes and succumbed to the feeling; wherever she touched, wildfire sprang up and burned bright and intensely. He felt as though he might shatter if she continued, but he wasn't going to stop her. It was amazing that just the sensation of her hands on his face was driving him mad. Need coursed through his veins. He wondered if it were the same for her.

She traced his jaw line and lower to his shoulders. Beneath the thin cotton t-shirt, she could feel the sleek, strong muscles tense beneath her touch. It was intoxicating, the idea that she, Pepper Potts, could do this to him. She _needed_ more; her hands tugged at the bottom of his t-shirt, desperate for the feel of his skin beneath her fingertips. For an instant, though, she hesitated, and Tony noticed.

"We don't have to—"

"Yes, we do," she said breathlessly. They did. They had to do this, because she knew that she could go no longer without it. Without _him_. It was as if there was an invisible force pulling her to him, and she couldn't resist. She didn't want to; all she wanted in that moment was to touch him. Without another moment's hesitation, she pulled his shirt over his head, and was tracing his muscles with her hands once more. Within moments, he was just as breathless as she was. His impatient hands ran across her belly, and toyed with the large buttons on her night gown. She shivered under his touch, which gave him all the encouragement he needed.

"Yeah, we do," Tony said in agreement. Pepper smiled at him, and closed the space between them and kissed him gently on the lips. He brought his hands up to cup her face and deepened the kiss. There was an edge of desperation in the kiss, as if each was afraid that the other was going to disappear. Pepper wrapped her arms around his neck tightly, and even after he broke the kiss, she didn't let go.

"Pepper, I'm not going anywhere," he told her, his voice husky. She nodded and let go. He started undoing the buttons on her nightgown, one by one. Her panties weren't traditionally sexy; she was wearing simple light blue cotton panties, but they were quite possibly the sexiest things that Tony Stark had ever seen. Pepper was squirming beside him, her eyes heavy lidded. He couldn't resist a kiss on her alabaster skin. She gasped.

"Tony…I need to touch…" She couldn't finish her sentence for breathlessness. Instead, she just took what she needed. She explored his chest with her small hands, feeling everything. Firm muscle, a few scars, the arc reactor. The arc reactor didn't bother her in the least; the blue glow was oddly comforting. The low humming, which could only be heard when she rested her head on his chest, was soothing.

It wasn't soothing, however, when he stopped touching her. He had managed to get all the buttons undone, which left her almost completely exposed to him. She studied his face, only to find that he was studying her with a horrified look on his face. His staring was interrupted abruptly when she pulled her nightgown shut and sat up.

"You have scars," he said plainly. She nodded, but let her nightgown fall open again.

"From when they had to repair the punctured lung."

"Your punctured lung. They had to repair _your _punctured lung."

"Right—"

"Pepper, this happened to you. _This _is happening to _you._"

"You're making love to me."

"Yes. Tell me to stop and I wil—"

"Don't you dare," she said throatily. "I'm not letting him keep me from the man I love. Now please touch me again."

He was only happy to oblige. Kisses trailed across her face, down her neck to her collarbone. He nipped at her nipple, and heat flashed through her, warm and bright and perfect. She reached for anything she could get her hands on, tangling them in his hair. She was adrift in a sea of pleasure and Tony was following closely behind, getting an intense pleasure out of watching her reactions. He traced her scars with his fingers, which elicited a low moan. The feel of his hands on her was driving her crazy. She almost came when his lips followed the path of his hands.

Her panties were gone in an instant, along with the nightgown. Her fingers clawed at his stomach as she tried to get him out of his pants. Two seconds later, they were gone, and his boxers shortly followed. They were truly bare to one another in every way: emotionally and physically. They were in ecstasy, and it was written on both of their faces.

"I need you inside me," she moaned. The erection pressing against her side was plenty proof that he apparently agreed. He didn't want her to feel smothered or threatened, which was really the only reason that he wasn't already there.

"Turn on your side," he said, his voice gentle. She did so, and draped her leg over his hip. "Are you su—"

"God, yes."

Pepper pressed as close as she possibly could to him, her hands on his bum, pulling him closer. His arms wrapped around her waist, doing the same. He entered her slowly, and it was heaven for both of them. They both knew that they weren't going to last long. The rhythm was perfection. It was like their own private dance, and they alone knew all the right steps. She moaned as he hit that sweet spot and she climaxed, wave after wave of pleasure pouring over her. She tightened around him and followed closely behind her.

They lay there for a long time afterward, not wanting to separate. It was as if they were clinging to each other for dear life. Even after they had gotten their breathing under control, they were still basking in the post-coital glow. When they finally separated, Tony traced a circle on Pepper's chest; it was the imprint of the arc reactor. Upon noticing, she smiled.

"Looks like you left your mark," she whispered.

"In more ways than one," he answered, tracing circles on her belly. She sighed in contentment. They finally separated, and Pepper pulled him close so that his head was resting on her breast. He could hear her heart beating, strong and steady. It was comforting, as was her nearness. "I love you."

"I know. I love you, too."

"You know that was binding, right? That I'm never gonna let you go," he whispered.

"Like I'd ever leave," she answered. Taking a deep breath, she breathed in his scent and was comforted. She turned on her side and curled up next to him, forehead to forehead. They stayed that way for quite some time until, eventually, they drifted off to sleep.

* * *

**Author's Note: **So, first "love scene" ever written. Please, let me know what you think, because if it was terribly awkward, it needs to get better. Anyway, other than that, I hope you enjoyed.


	11. Detectives

**Author's Note: **Thanks so much to everyone who read and reviewed the last chapter. You have no idea [or maybe you do] how much your feedback calmed my frazzled little nerves. Anyway, I hope you enjoy this chapter.  
_

* * *

The pain in his chest was excruciating. They hadn't given him enough anesthetic, and they were cracking his chest open to put in that damn base plate…God, it hurt. It was as if fire and ice and glass and steel were being forced through his veins. He was paralyzed, which only made it worse. He was itching to writhe and shriek, as if that would make the pain remotely tolerable, but no, he couldn't move. It was only by Providence that he was even breathing. The pain was that intense. It was breath-taking._

_"Tony? Tony!" Pepper was calling him, her voice full of anxiety. As terrible as his pain was, the distress in her voice was worse. He __**needed**__ to move, to go to her, to tell her not to worry, that he was going to be fine. Instead, he lay where he was, letting the pain slowly eat away at him. If only he could make her anxiety go away, perhaps his own pain would lessen. _

_"Tony! Tony? Are you alright?" she called again. The more she called, the more he wanted to move. He was a prisoner in his own body, fighting against himself to move, to go to Pepper, to give her some sign that he was here and alive. It took every ounce of his strength not to give in to the crippling pain and pass out. To even dream of moving….seemed impossible._

_"Tony! Please, Tony!" _

_With each word, the pain seemed to increase ten fold. He focused all his energy on trying to move, just a bit, to let Pepper know that he was there. He wasn't really sure when it had happened, but his captors were gone. Everything else remained: the cave, the pain, the haze of it all…God, he needed strength…He focused as hard as he could on letting her know he was there…_

_"Pep…" He managed a groan, and it felt like an enormous feat of strength. He tried again. "Pepper!" Upon realizing that he was speaking, he continued to do so, ignoring the grating sensation of his vocal folds. "Pepper! Pepper!!"_

_He could hear her approaching footsteps, increasing in speed as they got closer and closer. As she stepped through the makeshift doorway, she cut a very impressive figure. He thought that she was the most beautiful thing that he had ever seen. As she flew across the room to his side, he managed to continue breathing. She saw the mess that was his chest and she paled._

_"Tony? Oh my God…Tony!" She took his hand, afraid of touching him for causing further damage. He raised his arm and pulled her onto the cot with him, just wanting to have to close. It was wrong to want her with him in this hellhole, but she was the one relief that he had at the moment. The touch was comfort to him and comfort to her, and that was all they had right now…_

_"Tony…"_

_The cave was dark and cold and it left her feeling very claustrophobic. The ceilings seemed ready to fall in on her at any minute. It smelled musty, and there were dust particles floating around in the air that burned her eyes and throat. But as much as she wanted to leave, she couldn't. She had to find Tony. He was here somewhere, but she wasn't sure where, and she wasn't about to leave without him._

_The tunnels twisted and turned around, and Pepper quickly lost track of where she had come from. She couldn't really hear much of anything, which didn't help things at all. With no idea where she was going, she continued on, trying to quell the panic rising within her. Tony was around here somewhere, she just had to find him._

_Her heart was pounding, her breathing shallow and uneven. No matter how much she tried to hide it, from herself and anyone who happened to be lurking about, she was panicking. She had come with one mission: to find Tony, and now she wasn't even sure that she was going to succeed in that. A deep, overwhelming sadness swallowed her mind as she continued down the darkened paths. _

_Finally, she gave up on her quiet approach, threw all caution to the wind, and began to frantically call his name. Each time she said his name and got no response, she died a little inside. If Tony were there, he would answer. He wouldn't intentionally keep himself from her, not when she was panicking like this, and now when he was in pain, which she knew he was. No, there had to be something seriously wrong for him to remain silent._

_"Tony? Tony!" She called again. Half crazed with desperation, she picked up speed as she ran through the tunnels. "Tony! Tony? Are you alright?" There was still no answer, and she was practically sobbing. Tears were in her eyes, but she refused to accept the idea that he may be dead. There had to be another explanation. So she continued on, determined as ever. _

_"Tony! Please, Tony!"_

_At first she heard nothing but empty, haunting silence. But then she thought she heard a low groan, but she couldn't be sure. After a few more minutes, she could distinctly hear someone calling her name, their voice growing in strength with each word. It was Tony's voice, she knew._

_It wasn't difficult to locate him after that. She followed the sound of his pain-filled call, and found him on a makeshift hospital bed in one of the larger caverns in the cave. He was lying still, too still for her liking, actually. How she actually got from one side of the room to where he lay, she was very unsure. What mattered was that she was there. _

_"Tony! Oh my God…Tony!" She took his hand gently. There was blood all over his mangled chest, but somehow, it was holding together. It would have been very easy to give in to despair, to break down in hysterics, but that had never been her style. Instead, when Tony held out an arm and pulled her to him, she allowed it. Physically, there was nothing that she could do to relieve the pain. Emotionally, she was giving him all she could, and it was good for a few moments…_

They both jerked awake simultaneously in each other's arms, gasping and covered in sweat from their strange dreams. Tony's first reaction was to clutch Pepper closer to him, but she was already sitting up, studying him. Instead, he reached for the arc reactor, to make sure that his chest was closed and functional. Then he studied his lover with concern. Pepper, however, did not seem the least concerned bit for herself. Instead, she wrapped her arms around him tightly, and had a wide, triumphant grin on her face. Tony didn't understand how she could possibly be smiling when they had both awoken themselves from whatever strange nightmare they had been having, but she was smiling, and that was always a good sign.

"Are you alright?" he asked, tracing wide, comforting circles on her back. "Another nightmare?"

"Somewhat."

"You're somewhat alright or you had 'somewhat' of a nightmare?"

"I'm fine. It was a bit frightening, but the ending wasn't so bad," she said, kissing his check before laying back down. Tony followed suit and began to trace lazy patterns on her stomach. "It was different from the ones I have been having. It wasn't about Der—" Tony silenced her with a finger over her lips, on which she laid a kiss.

"We're not going to say his name in this bed anymore. He's not going to touch us here. Okay?" Tony said, his expression intense. "I'd really prefer that he not touch us at all anymore."

"Well, he didn't this time. It wasn't the nightmare that I've been having. It was an old one," she explained breathlessly, not able to completely keep the triumph out of her voice. Tony was still immensely confused as to why she was excited about any nightmare.

"It was still a nightmare."

"But the pattern was broken. Dr. Connelly said that recurring nightmares are from recurring brain patterns. We must have…created a new pattern—"

"I'll say." Pepper blushed from the roots of her hair to the tips of her toes. Tony smirked and let his hands wander lower, grinning wolfishly as he watched her react to him.

"We kept the…we kept _that_ nightmare at bay," she managed between gasps.

"But…it was still a nightmare. We're trying to get rid of those."

"Tony…it…" He was doing lovely things with his hands, and it was making her squirmy and unable to finish her sentences. For a few moments, she just lie still and let him pay her attention with his hands. It seemed that her bones had turned to mush and that she was no longer capable of rational thought. There was silence except for the sound of their breathing, and Pepper's gasps. After several long minutes of toe-curling, hair-pulling goodness, she managed to push his hands away, but not without disappointment.

"The nightmare was about you. When you were…gone in Afghanistan," she confessed. "You had one, too. What was it about?"

"Wait, you had nightmares about me in Afghanistan?" he asked, surprised. She had let him in, and he had every intention of staying in her good graces. She reached for his large hands and entwined them with her smaller ones; it was the only way to keep them from roaming her body.

"Yeah…I mean…you were gone for three months. Everyone kept saying that you were dead…Every time I would come to the house Jarvis would give me the odds of you coming back alive until I finally told him to stop. I used to dream that I was there, in that cave, looking for you, but I couldn't—"

"Find me," he finished. She nodded. Pulling his hands from hers, he wrapped his arms around her and pulled her close to him. They were a perfect balance: masculine and feminine, patience and temper, dark and light…it was as if it were meant to be. They complimented each other so well. In that moment, holding her against him, Tony realized just how small she really was; small but strong. She might look fragile, and maybe physically she was, but mentally, Pepper was the strongest person he had ever met. He laid a gentle kiss on her temple.

"Right. My…nightmare, if you want to call it that, was about losing _you._ _He _wasn't haunting my dreams. We won," she said, snuggling closer.

"Yeah…in that respect, we did." He ran his fingers through her hair, something that he had been longing to do since…well, since the day she walked through his door and informed him that he had made a multi-million dollar mistake in his budget.

She sighed in contentment. Everything felt so perfect, with the exception of the cast on her foot. The way he held her made her feel so incredibly feminine, like she was small, but not fragile. He respected her strength and didn't treat her like she was a porcelain doll. Being held so close...she felt cherished. The feel of the arc reactor between her shoulder blades was not uncomfortable, just a reminder that Tony Stark was one of the most special men in the world, and that he loved her. She was his lover, and more importantly, his beloved. Many women could say the former, none but her could truthfully say the latter.

"This is nice," she whispered.

"Nice? I'd say it was damn perfect," he said, his surprise at her word choice obvious in his voice. "If it was just _nice, _I think we might need a do over. Practice makes perfect, after all."

"No, _perfect_ practice makes perfect," she said.

"Trust me, Pepper…that was perfect."

She couldn't disagree.

* * *

An hour and a half later, they lay boneless, breathless, and completely satisfied in each other's arms. As easy as it would have been to go back to sleep, Pepper forced herself to leave the warmth and comfort of Tony's arms, but not before giving him a long, lingering kiss that warmed him to the tips of his toes. He was not happy about her exuent, and he made his grievance known with a loud groan.

"Where are you going?" he asked. His question was muffled, however, because he had buried his face in a pillow. It was only Pepper's special Tony-geared listening skills that enabled her to understand.

"I'm taking a bath. It's a weekday, and we have work to do," she said as she pulled a plastic bag out of her bedside table drawer. She carefully tied the plastic bag over her cast and headed into the bathroom.

"It's early. It's—" He checked the clock—"eight o'clock in the morning!"

"And by the time we're dressed and ready, it'll be later than that," she called from the bathroom. He could hear her turn the water on, and rose to join her in the bathroom. She was carefully stepping into the tub when she noticed him standing there, stark naked.

"Tony, we both know that I can't let you in this bathtub or we're going to be even later."

"I don't know that."

"I think a cold shower is in order for you." Her tone was teasing, but Tony could tell that she was serious. He knew that she was right; there was work to be done, and a villain to be caught. He had just hoped that for a few more minutes, he could keep the outside world from infringing on their time together. In their world, there wasn't anyone trying to keep dealing under the table or hurt Pepper or kill him. But, as he had learned the hard way from Obadiah, reality can be painful if neglected too long.

"Okay. I'll go take a shower." He left the bathroom, but then quickly turned around and went back into the bathroom. He kissed Pepper long and hard before leaving, for real this time, to go get his shower. Modesty was completely thrown to the wind as he walked across the house without a shred of covering. As easy as it would be to say that he didn't have a care in the world, it would also be a lie. The minute that he stepped out of Pepper's bedroom, the world had invaded his mind. He knew that Jarvis had finished going over the key card entries like they had asked him to yesterday, and that all that information would be waiting for them once they got ready.

It stayed in his mind as he showered. The most likely suspect, it seemed to him, was Phil Richardson, the head of the Research & Development department. Pepper, however, had made it perfectly clear that she didn't think it was him. He had a wife and two children, which, in Tony's book, didn't clear him from suspicion, and he was the head of the department in question. But then, he never would have thought that Obadiah would betray him, either. He would just have to see what Jarvis had come up with.

He wanted an answer to this more than he wanted just about anything. The only thing, well, Pepper wasn't a thing, but he wanted her more than the answer to this. But if they figured out who had put Derrick up to torturing Pepper, they would be able to sleep easier. There would be less danger for Pepper; he wouldn't have to worry so much about someone from his own company trying to hurt her. It would be easier to protect her, and himself, from outside forces when he didn't have to constantly worry about someone stabbing him, or Pepper, in the back.

Going into the office wasn't an option, he decided. He was going to stay right where he was—well, in that general area, anyway—until he and Pepper discovered who had her kidnapped and tortured. God, it had taken all his self control not to chuck a lamp through Pepper's bay window when she had told him what she went through. What kind of monster would hire someone like that? Who the hell could torture _Pepper_? After learning what the bastard had done to her, he was surprised that she managed to be as normal as she was. No, not really. He wasn't surprised at all. She was his strong, beautiful Pepper, and she had refused to let that son-of-bitch affect her. He wasn't surprised at all.

After quickly toweling dry, he threw on some clothes and headed into the kitchen to grab a cup of coffee. Pepper was still getting dressed, so he poured her a cup and took it to her. He found her struggling to get into a pair of burgundy pinstriped pants that didn't want to fit over her bulky black cast.

"Would you like some help with that?" he asked.

"I think I've got it—" She was cut off as she lost her balance and fell back onto the bed. Tony's heart leapt into his throat for a moment as he tried to catch her. Seeing that she was fine, he crossed his arms over his chest and looked down at her, amused.

"Now would you like some help with that?" She nodded, her cheeks red in embarrassment. She sat on the edge of the bed while he patiently pulled the pants over her feet and up her very well-shaped legs. "I never thought I would see the day when I would be putting clothes on you instead of taking them off."

She laughed, a true, belly-deep laugh. "I never thought I'd see the day when we would be playing detective, either."

"Play detective? We can try it later, if that's really your thing," he said suggestively, with a raised eyebrow. "But for now, Jarvis is done sorting through those files, and we could have a look." Pepper rose from the bed as quickly as she could and headed for the living area, Tony following quickly behind. She settled herself on a chair in front of the smart glass windows.

"Jarvis, please show the results of your search from last night," Pepper asked. Several neat rows and columns of data appeared on the screen, color coordinated to show when two people or more people were in the same area together. The area was listed, along with which security feeds they would need to look through. It was still going to be a lot of data to sort through, and a lot of video feeds to watch, but they were one step closer to figuring it all out. The end was in sight; they were in the home stretch.

"Alright, so…do you want the top half or the bottom half?" Tony asked.

"I say we divide it up by which area they were in. That way we don't have to keep constantly switching which feed we're watching."

"Or we could do that, too," Tony said, quickly realizing that Pepper's plan was going to be far easier.

"Alright…the areas that they all have in common are…fancy that, the Research & Development wing…the staff cafeteria, that's not unusual…warehouse 12—"

"Warehouse 12?" Tony asked, his voice sharper than he meant it to be.

"Yeah…I wasn't aware that we were using those…"

"We aren't. Thos were the warehouses where Obi was storing all his contraband that he was going to sell under the table…that's where they took you when you were kidnapped."

"Oh," she said, a little shocked. "I didn't actually ask about that when I woke up in the hos—"

"You had other things on your mind at the time," Tony said, rubbing her back. No matter how hard he tried, it was simply impossible for him to go without touching her for too long. She was addictive, it seemed.

"Well, we could check that one first, then shall we? Jarvis, please pull up the security feeds for Warehouse 12."

"Yes, ma'am."

"Pepper, we could just check to see whose card was used to get in. You don't have to look at the security tapes," Tony told her, wrapping an arm around her waist and pulling her closer. She rested her head on his shoulder.

"Jarvis, whose card was used to access the warehouse?"

"There were several, ma'am. Dr. James, David Benson, and Phil Richardson," the AI replied. As much as she tried, Pepper was unable to stifle a gasp of complete shock. Tony had suspected the head of the public relations department, but really hated that his suspicions were confirmed, if only that it hurt Pepper…well, that, and he really liked the guy.

"Jarvis, please pull up the security feeds for Warehouse 12, if you don't mind," Pepper said, having recovered herself.

"It will be one moment, Miss Potts. It appears that the files have been buried under numerous layers of password protection."

"That's not necessary—"

"Yes, it is. I have to see for myself."

"Pepper—"

"If you could show the footage from the minute before his card was swiped until I tell you to stop please. Also, if you could show all the feeds simultaneously, that would be lovely."

With that command, one large image of the doorway appeared on the left, and several smaller images on the right. In the bottom, far right corner, the image was far too familiar. Cinder block walls, poured concrete floor…and there she was, in a pool of her own bodily fluids, Derrick kneeling beside her. For a moment, she froze, before getting her bearings once again. She took several deep breaths, trying to quell the panic. Tony had noticed the screen by now, she knew, but she didn't want him to watch it. He should never see her that way.

"We don't need the bottom, far right image, Jarvis," Pepper said with difficulty. "You may play the rest."

"Hold on that, Jarvis."

Tony saw the resolve and the hurt on her face. He wished that he could change things, to take her pain away. Instead, he settled for trying to comfort her, by wrapping his arms around her and pulling her back against his chest. She sighed, trying to ignore the feeling of betrayal that was raging through her. It shouldn't hurt so much, but she had always gotten along well with Phil, and the idea that he would have her tortured…it was like swallowing acid: it was a bit unbearable, and crippling. She leaned into Tony and let him support her weight in its entirety. Feeling his breath on the back of her neck, his arms around her, and the arc reactor pressed against her back gave her comfort.

"Are you ready?" She nodded. "Play the tape Jarvis."

The lighting was fairly terrible in the video, which made it difficult to distinguish the man's face. He was a tall, well-built man in a dark, well-cut suit, just like any normal businessman would be. He was carrying a briefcase, which he set down just long enough to pull his ID card out of the breast pocket. Then he picked up the briefcase and proceeded inside. He disappeared out of the frame before reappearing in a different one as he moved through the building, now clutching the briefcase tightly against his chest. He disappeared out of several more frames as he continued up the stairs, his face still obscured. It was only when he reached the top of the stairs that they could see his face.

"That's not Phil," Pepper whispered, recognizing the face of Craig Williams, head of the manufacturing department. She could feel Tony tense behind her, and his arms got noticeably tighter. He also swore a blue streak.

"It makes sense. He would be able to go in and out of the R&D department without drawing any attention to himself, because the two departments are so closely related." Tony muttered. "Now…what's in the briefcase?"

They continued to watch as he walked across the balcony that ran across the upstairs of the warehouse. There was a door at the far end of the balcony. Williams knocked on the door, and David Lane opened it, looking very unhappy about something. Even if there hadn't been sound on the security tape, it still would have been obvious from the highly animated, and occasionally obscene, gestures that they weren't getting along.

"He's had plenty of time with her. She ain't gonna talk," Lane was saying, and sounding very unhappy about it.

"She's Tony Stark's secretary, God knows if anything, she can weather a storm. It takes time—"

"You people and your time! By the time you finally crack her, the damn weapons are going to be shipped already!"

"It's the principle of the thing. Think about it. She either dies, in which case Tony Stark will suffer a complete breakdown, or she cracks and betrays him, and he still suffers a complete breakdown. Either way, it works."

"You're going to all this trouble just to make Tony Stark go nuts? Hell, he's fuckin' insane already. He flies around in damn iron suit…don't get much crazier than that."

"David, you are a blunt instrument. You do not understand the concept of finesse. Luckily, this is a concept that Dr. James has embraced. These are the supplies that he asked for from his lab station. Get them to him, and be sure to tell me when you finally break her," Williams said, his voice cold and businesslike. It made Pepper shiver. She felt the tenseness of Tony's jaw as he rested his chin on her shoulder.

"I'll do that, but I think you could be waiting for awhile. He pulled her nails out earlier, and she still didn't crack. She got pissed off instead."

"Well, this should help speed the process," Williams said as he shoved the briefcase into Lane's hands and headed back down the stairs. On his way out the warehouse, he stopped to look at several of the devices that were on the ground floor before leaving.

"He was trying to decide what he was going to sell next," Tony realized.

The tape continued to play, and he could hear screams of pain that chilled him to the bone. They were Pepper's screams…He didn't realize that he was biting his lip so hard until he tasted the blood in his mouth. It wasn't until Pepper tried to turn in his arms that he realized he was holding her too tightly. The cruelty of Williams was simply incredible, and not in a good way. He had no scruples about killing an innocent human being just to hurt him.

"Jarvis, that's enough, thank you," Pepper whispered. The screens went blank. "We should sit." Tony just nodded, and supporting each other, they managed to make it to the sofa. Tony lay down immediately, fighting the nausea that threatened to overwhelm him. Pepper balance herself on the edge of the sofa studying him, her face full of concern. Needing the comfort of her touch, he pulled her down to him so that she was resting atop him. Silence filled the room, neither of them wanting to break it.

"He had no scruples about killing you," Tony finally said when the silence started to get unnerving.

"I'm betting that he wanted to be able to have you declared mentally incompetent, that way the board has control over the company again."

"They tortured you to get to me." His voice was full of self-loathing. She kissed his neck, trying to provide comfort.

"Self-loathing is not flattering on you."

"It was my fau—"

"Again, not flattering. It is not your fault. You didn't hurt me. They did, and I'm not going to stand for you to blame yourself. You're nothing like them. You are brave and loving and kind…Those men could never be that."

He went to speak again, but she silenced him with a kiss. It was hard and fierce and primal. She tangled her hands in his hair, pulling him closer still as they started to move against each other. He quickly followed suit, but they soon had to pull away because they were both humans who needed air.

"It must be the detective thing, right?" Tony teased breathlessly. She grinned.

"It could be that. But we went to too much trouble to get these pants on—"

"I could put them back on again—" He was cut off again when she took his lower lip between her teeth and tugged gently. This time, he ended it. "For someone who doesn't want me to get into her pants, you sure aren't doing much to stop me."

"One more thing…is bothering me," she said, pushing herself off of him. Her mind was fuzzy, lost in a haze of sensual pleasure, and she wanted to have him more than she wanted to breathe. But there was one thing she had to check first. "Jarvis…pull up the security footage of Phil Richardson and Craig Williams in the cafeteria together."

Jarvis pulled up the footage and began to play it. Tony looked a bit confused, but as he watched, he began to understand. Together, they watched while Phil and Williams had lunch together. Phil took off his suit jacket and draped it over a chair at their table, as he mentioned that he was headed out afterwards to go to career day at his daughter's school. They discussed boring, board member things over lunch, and when Phil rose to take his tray, Williams reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out his ID card. Phil returned, said his goodbyes, and left without noticing that the ID was missing.

"He took Phil's ID, because he didn't want it to register that he had been there. Then, he tried to bury the security footage so that no one could see that he'd been there," Pepper said. Tony smiled at her, relief evident on his face.

"We found him."

"We found him," she agreed. He kissed her again, lifting her off her feet as he did so. He set her down gently on the sofa, still kissing her, and moved over her. She finally broke away. "We really should call Detective O'Shea—"

"We will, in a minute…a few minutes," he answered, kissing her neck. Her eyes fell shut, and she tangled her hands in his hair.

"Right…just a few minutes…"

* * *

**Author's Note: **So, there you have it...hopefully it made you smile in some way. If not, let me know. If it did...let me know that, too.


	12. Showtime

**Author's Note:** Hugely immense apologies for the delay. I never really think about how crazy life is until...well, it gets crazy. Anyway, a huge thank you to those who have reviewed/favorited/put this story on alert. I hope this lives up to your expectations. Please enjoy. =}  


* * *

Forty-five minutes later later, Tony was lying in bed with a satisfied smile, still waiting for his legs to start working again. Pepper, who was as equally flushed and boneless next to him, was less content. She was mentally berating herself for giving in to her urges when she should have been getting all the evidence together to give to the police. Who knew the damage that Craig Williams could have done in the forty-five minutes that they had been…doing things other than gathering information for the police. Those thoughts in mind, she rose from the bed and began to gather her clothes.

"What are you doing?" Tony asked, his voice low and lazy and sexy as hell. He was making it all too easy to climb back into bed with him and forget the rest of the world. But as she buttoned her shirt and noticed her fingernails—which were slowly regrowing—and the scars on her belly, she pushed any thought of climbing back into bed with him aside.

"What I should have been doing an hour ago. I'm going to put all the evidence on a disc so that we have it all together when we finally go to the police."

"It's been…forty-eight minutes," he corrected, checking the clock.

"Do you know the damage that he could have done in forty-eight minutes? He could have sealed a deal with a terrorist in that time, for all we know. We need to—"

"Pepper," Tony said as he took her hands. "Calm down. Jarvis is will notify us if anyone tries to enter that warehouse."

"I need to get the evidence organized to turn into the police," she said. She wanted to kiss him, but she also knew that if she did, she couldn't guarantee that her self control would let her pull away again. Instead, she busied herself straightening her clothes so that she looked halfway decent, just so that she wouldn't be naked in her office. After she got everything together and called the police, she could go shower. Tony just watched as she got dressed.

"You know, I've been turned on by a woman putting clothes on before," he commented.

"First time for everything, I guess," Pepper answered smartly.

"Jarvis?" he called.

"Yes, sir?"

"Can you please put all the security logs for warehouse 12 in one file, along with the video files that we viewed earlier? Also, Miss Potts wants to burn them onto a disc…take care of that, too."

"Yes, sir."

"Problem solved," he said with a pointed look at his lover.

"I'll go supervise. Also, I want to back everything up on an external drive."

"Jarvis can—"

"I'm going," she said with an air of finality, before leaving the room. Tony dragged himself from the bed and began to pull his clothes on, if for no other reason than to have an excuse to share the shower with Pepper later. A moment later, she poked her head back in the room. "You're going to need another shirt. Some of the buttons popped off." He laughed and pulled open a drawer for another shirt.

"Sir?" Jarvis interrupted.

"Yeah?"

"You requested to be notified when someone entered Warehouse 12. Someone has entered the premises."

"Who is it?" he asked, his blood running cold. He looked over at Pepper and watched as she turned three shades paler than he had ever imagined she could. His hands started to work in overdrive, almost of their own accord.

"The entry key used belonged to Phil Richardson, but my facial recognition program indicates that it is Craig Williams."

"Pull the video up on the smart glass." Tony stepped over to his window and watched the footage that Jarvis pulled up, Pepper at his side. He could clearly see Craig Williams walking through the first floor, looking at the equipment. Looking wasn't actually the right word. He was scrutinizing it, studying it…Tony could practically see the cogs turning in his mind, calculating how much it would cost to produce each piece, what it could be most cheaply made for, how much it could be sold for and who would pay the most for it…Yes, Williams was definitely choosing his next product.

"He's deciding—"

"What to sell," Pepper finished for him. "If we hadn't been fooling around, he would be in jail by now." He felt her tense, and tried to take her hand comfortingly. She pulled away, and with that, she turned and left the room, but not before looking over her shoulder and seeing the crushed look on Tony's face.

"Jarvis, he is going to try to disable the security cameras and delete the footage with him on it. Override that. Don't let him shut them down or access any of the files. Also, ready the suit," he said, trying to keep the edge of panic out of his voice.

"Will do, sir."

"Pepper!" Tony yelled after her, running to her office. He found her office empty, so he headed to his workshop, still calling her name. By the time he got there, Jarvis had the suit ready. "Pepper!" he called again, expecting to hear the click-clack of her heels as she came from where ever she was. Instead, he was surprised to find her already in his workshop, grabbing a set of keys off a rack where they were hanging.

"I've got to get there to stop him from taking whatever it is that he's decided on."

"I know," she said, leaning against one of Tony's many cars as she unlocked the door.

"What are you doing?" he asked.

"I'm coming with you. And since I won't fit in the suit, a car is my best option for transportation," she said, as if he were crazy for thinking anything else.

"You should call Detective O'Shea—"

"I will…while I'm driving."

"Pepper—"

"I'm not staying behind. I need to be there…this is the guy that had me tortured—"

"You could get hurt, Pepper—"

"I could get hurt falling down the stairs. Or driving a car. Or falling off my shoe. We don't have time to argue about this right now, and you know it," she said, unable to keep the edge of urgency and annoyance out of her voice. Unfortunately for Tony, she was right. She was determined to be there, and truth be told, he couldn't blame her. He would have felt the same way if he were in her position. She had a right to see the man that had planned her kidnapping and torture brought to justice. Knowing that he couldn't do anything to change her mind, he kissed her quickly and fiercely before getting into the suit.

"Be careful," he told her.

"Always," she answered with a smile. With that, she climbed into the silver Audi and shot out of the garage in a way that Tony never imagined she was capable of. The engine was roaring, tires squealing. Yes, it would have rivaled his driving, he thought with a smile.

As soon was his armor was in place, he shot out of the garage and across the skies towards Warehouse 12.

* * *

Pepper had never been quite so grateful for Bluetooth and voice command before. Quite possibly because she had never driven like a maniac before. _Tony would be proud, _she thought. As soon as she was out of the driveway, she called Detective O'Shea.

"Detective O'Shea," he answered on the first ring.

"Detective O'Shea, this is Pepper Potts. We figured it out."

"What?"

"Who had me kidnapped. It was Craig Williams, the head of our marketing department."

"How did you—"

"I have all the files on a disk in my office at hom—Tony's. There are security logs, video files…everything that you would need to get a conviction."

O'Shea was silent for a long moment, in complete shock, before he finally managed to get himself together enough to speak. "That's…great. I'll come by and pick it up. Are you at Tony's—"

"Not anymore. I actually need you to send a team to the warehouse where you found me. Warehouse 12. William's is there. My guess is that he's trying to figure out what he wants to sell under the table next. Tony is suited up and already on the way there."

"Right. We're coming. You do realize that if you're wrong about this—"

"I'm not. We have security video of him explaining his plan to David Lane at the scene. Then he delivered the drugs that Dr. James used on me."

"Okay. We're on the way."

"Good. Tony might already be there. I'm on the way—"

"Miss Potts, you should stay out of this—"

"Don't tell me to stay out of the way," she said dangerously. "I'm not a china doll. I'm not going to break into a million little pieces when I see him."

"No, but I'm betting you're not wearing body armor, either. And your foot is still in a cast. You could get hurt—"

"I'll see you there, detective," she said before promptly hanging up. She jammed the gas pedal to the floor of the car as the GPS directed her towards the warehouse. She now understood why Tony drove the way he did. There was something exhilarating about it. It was a sort of escape, and she definitely knew about wanting to escape.

Tony's hurt expression when she had pulled away from him earlier was haunting her mind. But she just couldn't let Tony see what kind of affect Williams had on her. Still had on her. Seeing the video earlier had jarred her into a harsh reality. The reality of it all was that there really are monsters in this world, and she had seen one. But she was going to keep her emotions in check, and she was going to nail his ass to the wall. With thoughts of him, she pushed the gas pedal harder, determined to outrun the disgusting feeling that came to mind when she thought of him.

But they were going to catch him. She was on the way, O'Shea was on the way, and Tony was probably already there. God only knows, he had an arsenal in that suit of his and that should be more than good enough to take down one person. They might have to scrape him off the floor of the warehouse, but she had complete faith that Tony would keep him from doing anymore damage. But she was still anxious about it, and that made her put more on the gas.

* * *

Tony made it to the warehouse in three minutes. If it were a normal situation—as in, one where he wasn't worried about the consequences of blowing up the building—he wouldn't have bothered to be delicate about it. He would have torn through the roof and tossed things around a bit until he found the man he was looking for. Instead, he slowed his descent and landed as quietly as he could outside the building. Of course, it was impossible to be stealthy in a red and gold titanium suit, and the minute he took his first step towards the warehouse, there was a clang as his foot came down on the pavement.

Life would have been much easier if he could have just blown the building sky high. Normally, that wasn't really an issue on missions, given that the whole point of those missions was to find his weapons and destroy them. He hadn't had a chance to look over everything that was stored in this warehouse, but he wasn't about to risk blowing up something that could have toxic fumes or cause a massive explosion…more massive than usual, anyway. Plus, if he killed Williams, he couldn't get off on the self-defense plea.

So, repressing his urge say "Ah, fuck it" and blow the entire thing sky high, he pulled the door off its hinges and entered slowly. He didn't see Williams, but he also knew that he had to be there somewhere. He couldn't have possibly left in just three minutes. And his car was still parked outside.

He scanned the large, open downstairs area, and preceded to look at bit more closely. Maneuvering was difficult and Tony was quickly losing patience. It was far too easy to just toss things aside. _Remember, patience is key. Find the asshole, rough him up, turn him in. Find, beat, turn him in…_

There was a very faint shuffling noise above him. Not trusting the stairs to hold him, Tony quickly flew up to the balcony. Before he managed to land, he was enveloped in a cloud of mist. Immediately, his flight stabilizers cut out on him and he dropped back to the hard concrete first floor. Confused, he looked down at his hands, trying to figure out what the hell just happened. There was strange bubbling and melting of everything that the mist had touched. He quickly pulled up his face plate before it could melt shut.

"What is that, Jarvis?" he asked, not bothering to hide the panic in his voice.

"It appears to be some type of strong acidic compound, sir."

"It's almost pure hydrochloric acid," a voice answered from the balcony. Before Tony could move, he felt something hit him in the side and he went slamming into the floor. The jagged, melted metal of his helmet cut into his face and blood began to trickle into his eyes. He didn't want to touch his face for fear of getting acid on his skin, which would be very painful and very bad.

"Obadiah managed to have his scientists come up with some fascinating things. This acid compound is definitely my favorite. I'm also a fan of these higher-powered armor piercing rounds," Williams said as he looked down on Tony from the balcony. Noticing the large and wicked looking weapon in his hand, Tony rolled underneath the balcony and looked around for anything that could be used as a weapon. There were several long metal cases lined against the wall. He had no idea what was inside them, but he picked it up, ready to use it as a weapon. He clinked his way over to the stairs, waiting for Williams. There was only one way for him to come down to the first floor, and Tony was ready for him. As Williams tip toed down the stairs, hoping Tony wouldn't be able to hear him, Tony swung the case as hard as he could, slamming it into a beam beneath the stairs. The beam snapped and Williams fell to the floor. Tony swung the beam down at him, but he rolled out of the way and disappeared behind some boxes.

Losing his patience, Tony grabbed the box and pushed it out of the way, keeping Williams on the move. He heard a squeal of tires outside and knew that the police must be there. At least, he was hoping it was the police and not Pepper. God only knows, he didn't need her to run in and get hurt again.

"Did you think that we were just going to ignore all the fun things that Stane left for us? There's far too much money to be made to just ignore it all," Williams said. Tony hurled the metal case in the direction that his voice was coming from, forgetting all worries about the possible consequences. It hit a large container and knocked it over, triggering the domino effect with the row of boxes. Tony kept walking towards where he thought Williams was hiding. Instead of finding him, all he found was a large mess.

_Damn, he's quick_, Tony thought. Just then, he heard a noise behind him and turned just in time to see an explosive projectile flying towards him. He leapt to the side and avoided the rocket, but it hit the pile of boxes on the floor and exploded, sending Tony flying through the wall of the warehouse.

* * *

Pepper screeched into alley beside the warehouse twenty-five minutes after leaving the Stark estate. While it was definitely a miracle that she had not been pulled—especially since she had run every red light between the mansion and the warehouse—her miracles had run out. There were several cop cars and a SWAT vehicle in the alleyway, and Kevlar clad men running about all over the place. She stopped the car with a screech of breaks, stepped out and made a beeline for the warehouse.

There was a chorus of yelling and shouting. She managed to decipher "stop right there!" "don't move!" and "freeze!" from the mass of yelling. Pepper complied and slowly turned to face a crowd of highly armed SWAT men, her open palms held outward to show that she was unarmed. At the front of the crowd of officers was Detective O'Shea, looking…well, to say he was furious was not a strong enough word.

"Are you _trying _to get yourself killed?" he yelled at her. Before she had a chance to respond, there were several loud clangs and crashes from inside the building, followed closely by several loud bangs. Despite knowing that he was covered from head to toe in titanium gold alloy, Pepper still couldn't help but cringe. And as the noises got progressively worse, she couldn't help but wonder what in the world was going on in there.

She wasn't wondering very long before the outside wall of the warehouse exploded outward, sending several policemen and their weapons flying. People were dropping to the floor to avoid the flying bricks, plaster, and various other bits of rubble. Pepper wasn't really sure how she got on the ground, but when she looked up expecting to see Tony standing in the opening, she was surprised to see Williams instead, armed with what appeared to be a rocket launcher. Tony was lying in a heap with the other bits of wall, scrambling to pull the coverings off his hands.

"Tony!" she shouted as she rose to go to him. O'Shea grabbed her around the waist and pulled her back to the ground, slamming her roughly into the pavement. In her panic, she didn't feel a damn thing. "Let go! I've got to help him—"

"By getting yourself blown up? He's in a titanium suit. He'll be fine," O'Shea hissed in her ear, getting more annoyed by the second.

"You've never had to take care of him after a mission. Trust me, he'll be feeling that one in the morning."

"Yeah, well, if you get yourself killed, you're not going to be patching him up after any more missions."

"Tony!" she yelled again, still trying to get free.

Upon hearing her voice, both Tony and Williams froze. From where she was lying, she could see the terrified expression on his face, which only made her feel equally scared. He had been hoping that O'Shea would keep Pepper away from the actual scene. But then, that was a stupid thought. When she made up her mind to do something, she did it. But that didn't mean that he had to like it, and that didn't mean that he wasn't terrified of her being there, especially given the new and interesting developments.

"Did I hear the melodious voice of Pepper Potts?" Williams asked, setting his rocket launcher on the ground. "Where is she? I'd like to have a little chat with her."

"You stay the hell away from her, you son of a bitch."

Tony pulled himself from the rubble, grabbed one of the guns that had been lying on the pavement, and fired several shots at Williams, all of which hit him in the chest, dropping him to the ground like a rock. He lay still for several minutes, unmoving. In those several minutes, everything was still, as if no one dared to move for fear of waking him…as if he were asleep. Finally, Tony turned towards where Pepper and O'Shea lay on the ground. She wriggled out from underneath the police detective and made her way over to Tony, but only after carefully sidestepping piles of rubble.

"Are you alright?" she asked. He pulled up his faceplate to reveal that his face had several cuts, all of which were bleeding. "How did he manage to hurt you? You're in—"

"Some of the weapons in there are armed with armor piercing rounds," he said, his voice for the first time revealing and edge of pain. Pepper took several steps back to study his armor, which she noticed had been dented seriously on the left side. She reached out to touch the dent there.

"Are you…your ribs could be—"

"Probably a little broken."

"You should lie down," she said, feeling him start to pitch forward. She helped him to lie down on the pavement before he could fall forward and crush her beneath the suit. "What happened?"

"There's some equipment in there…Obie must have had it developed. It's unbelievable. He had some kind of acidic compound that weakened the armor. I couldn't just go in shooting…might blow something up—"

"Right. I know how much you hate explosions," she said teasingly as she wiped blood off his face with her shirttail.

"I didn't want to blow the whole place sky high. There could have been toxic fumes or something. He sprayed me with whatever it was from the balcony and the armor started malfunctioning—"

"Well, you have plenty of time to fix it later."

"Or perhaps not. Kevlar is quite the invention."

Upon hearing Williams' voice, she froze. Literally. She was unable to move. She collapsed beside Tony onto the warm pavement and watched as all the police officers dropped like flies. They both lie there, unable to do anything but watch as Williams moved towards them, gun in hand, along with a small device that looked familiar. When he drew closer, Tony recognized the small device that Obadiah had used to paralyze him. This one looked slightly different, but not enough to really matter. Only problem was, this one had worked from farther away.

Williams crouched between Tony and Pepper as he spoke to them, his words sickening. "Miss Potts, I just want you to know that having you—well, using, shall we say, coercive tactics on you…it was nothing personal. As I told Mr. Stark earlier, its all about business. There is simply too much money to be made off selling his weapons under the table. And the ones that you wouldn't give up, Miss Potts, would have fetched me quite the sum. But as you can see, there are plenty of other options here."

Tony was grunting and groaning, wanting to move more than anything else in the world. Pepper just stared at Williams, unable to think of anything besides how much she wanted to wipe that smug grin off his face. Instead, she had no choice other than to sit there and listen to him gloat.

"I mean, really, did you think we were just going to lay down and die? We've had this system in place for a long time, Mr. Stark, and it's going to keep going for a very long time, because it works. You're too busy running around in your giant iron condom to pay too much attention, and little Miss Potts is too busy taking care of your ass to notice."

Williams stood and walked over to one of the police officers that was lying on the ground. His gun was lying only a few inches from where he had fallen, but the poor soul was helpless to do anything but watch as Williams picked up the gun and took aim at him. Upon hearing the shot, Pepper flinched.

_You just flinched, _she thought. _Pepper, you just flinched. You're starting to get movement back!_

She felt a tingling as feeling spread through her limbs. Not wanting to give herself away as she watched Williams move on to another police officer. Again, she flinched at the gun shot, and tried to move a bit more. She found that she could move her hands and feet, and slowly but surely, she was able to move her limbs. She tried to force her limbs to bend and twist, but they weren't fully cooperating just yet. Instead, she felt like a fish out of water flopping about. Luckily—or unfortunately, she wasn't really sure which—Williams was too preoccupied with his massacre of the police force to notice. A pang of guilt stabbed through her with each shot. She looked at Tony, who was equally horrified. He was still completely paralyzed but that didn't stop him from catching her eye pointedly.

Following his gaze, she saw noticed that pistol that was jammed under his body. It was the same one that he had shot Williams with earlier. Jerkily, she reached out and took hold of the butt of the gun and tugged, unable to get it loose because her motions were short and incomplete. She kept shooting looks back towards Williams as he continued cutting a bloody swath through the paralyzed police officers. After several tries, the gun finally came free.

Williams had picked up a new gun and was continuing his bloody rampage. An anger that Pepper had never felt before was building inside her. She knew that she was never going to be able to hit him from where he was. There had to be some way to make him come closer to her. That was the only way she could stand a chance at hitting him. Her face had relaxed more, her jaw was slack. She flexed her facial muscles and moved her jaw, testing it. Then, she tucked the pistol inside her jacket and watched as he chose his next victim—detective O'Shea—and prepared to take his life.

"No! Please don't! Please!" she shrieked, hoping to stop any further bloodshed…well, on his part, anyway. Williams turned towards the sound of her voice, his expression and odd mixture of curiosity and shock. He began to walk towards where she was lying on the pavement, driven by his need to satisfy his curiosity.

"You can talk?" he asked, unable to keep the surprise out of his voice. He continued to move closer.

"Obviously."

Closer.

"That's interesting…Dr. James told me that this little device would keep you paralyzed for at least fifteen minutes…you appear to be the exception."

Closer.

Without another word, Pepper pulled the fun from inside her jacket and fired a single shot. Williams jerked as it caught him in the leg. He fired back at her, missing by inches. She fired once more and hit him in the leg once again. This time, he crumpled to the pavement. Blood was pouring from the wounds in his leg.

Still, she didn't let go of the gun. It was shaking in her hands, and for the first time she noticed how very heavy and awkward it felt in her petite hands. Tony, who could do nothing but look on, didn't like the look of a gun in Pepper's grasp. It seemed so out of place for her. She was a nurturer…not a destroyer. After this was over, he was going to make sure she never needed to touch a gun again.

Williams, writing in pain on the ground, looked at her, confusion more evident on his face than ever before. Blood was everywhere, spreading in an ever-widening puddle underneath him. In the back of Pepper's mind, she knew that she should try to stop the bleeding, but she just couldn't bring herself to touch him.

"How did you…?" he gasped.

"You didn't think I would just lay down and die, did you?" Then she pulled her phone from her pocket and quickly dialed 9-1-1.

"9-1-1 emergency. How may I be of assistance?"

* * *

**Author's Note: **So, this thing is coming to a close. There will be an epilogue to tie up some loose ends and answer a few questions, but this is about it. Anyway, I hope you liked it. Please let me know because I know this chapter feels a bit choppy to me. Please review, and again, I hope you enjoyed it.


	13. I Think That Can Be Arranged

**Author's Note: **Okay, here it is. The final chapter. This was my first ever attempt a fanfiction, so a big thanks to everyone who reviewed/alerted/favorited. It definitely encouraged me to keep going. I apologize this took so long to get out. I hope it was worth the wait.  


* * *

Pepper was awake, but hadn't yet opened her eyes. She could tell that the sun was shinking—and not because of a a report from Jarvis. Keeping her eyes closed, she took in the sounds that surrounded her: the faint splashing of the fountain in the living room, the faint sound of waves breaking on the beach, sea gulls crying on the nearby beach, but most of all, that familiar mechanical hum of the arc reactor, and Tony's light snoring. With a contented sigh, she opened her eyes to a very familiar and lovely sight.

Tony was lying on his back, one arm behind his head, the other sprawled open wide beneath Pepper. His mouth was slightly open, drool trickling down the side of his face. She couldn't resist a giggle. After all, who would imagine the famous (former) womanizer Tony Stark drooling in his sleep. No one would believe her if she had told them, but she had known since her third day of work when she had to rouse him from sleep. It was endearing in a very silly sort of way; that way that only someone who truly loved him could understand.

"Tony," she whispered. "You're drooling."

He jerked awake, and then cringed. There were large, white bands of bandage wrapped rather tightly around his ribs, three of which were broken. However, he had refused to stay in the hospital any longer than he had to and was home two days later. Normally, he didn't slow down when he was hurt. Too many times Pepper had come into the house to find him up and moving when he should be taking it easy. This time, he had been perfectly content to lay around, probably mostly because Pepper was there to lie around with him.

The whole experience of the past few months had changed him. It had changed them both, but Tony in particular. He wasn't a sentimental person; when he said things that were meaningful to him, it was usually when they just slipped out of his mouth before he had a chance to think about it. Now, any time there was an opportunity to express the depth of his feelings for Pepper, he seized it. They weren't huge, grandiose gestures; no, Pepper wasn't the kind of girl that wanted that sort of thing. Instead, it was the little things like holding her hand or kissing her forehead. Looking over his schematics on the dining room table instead of in his secluded workshop. Life was too short to miss a moment that could be spent with Pepper.

Tony buried his face in the pillow for a moment before smiling at Pepper. When he raised his head, the drool was gone. "I don't know what you're talking about. I don't drool."

"Right. And Rhodey's retiring today."

Tony raised his eyebrows. "He is?" Pepper laughed and kissed him lightly. One kiss just wasn't good enough for Tony, who rolled on top of her and began to shower her with kisses. The moment was perfect…absolutely perfect. Pepper closed her eyes once more and basked in the beauty of a moment of perfect love.

"This is perfect," she said, pushing a strand of Tony's hair out of his face.

"You're perfect," he answered with a light nip of her neck. She sighed and didn't disagree, because in his arms, she felt perfect. She rolled over so that she was atop him, forgetting his broken ribs for just a moment. The minute the slightest amount of pressure was on his ribs, he gasped. Then she stopped feeling perfect and was concerned again.

"Sorry! Are you alri—"

"Don't finish that sentence," he said, cutting her off with a finger over her lips. For the first time, he was understanding why she hated it when he had asked her that same question when she was recovering.

"You do realize that's my job, right? Making sure you're okay?" she said, a slight grin on her face.

"Your job? So, there's nothing personal about it?" Tony asked lightly, his thumbs tracing circles on her hips.

"Maybe." She gasped as his hands drifted just a bit lower. "You know…just a little."

"Just a little?" She gasped again, her head lolling to the side, her nails digging into his forearms. He was incredibly pleased with her response. Until she noticed the clock on the bedside table, that is.

"Tony…"

"Yeah?"

"It's eight o'clock…we have work to do. We're giving statements at the police station at nine thirty," she whispered. Tony groaned, but rose from the bed. Pepper followed suit, and headed to her room to get bathe and get dressed. By the time she emerged from the bathroom, Tony was sitting on her bed, already dressed. He had pulled a black skirt suit out of her closet for her and a white button down.

"Thanks," she said, hobbling to her underwear drawer. She pulled it open and purposely took plenty of time selecting her under garments, making sure to give Tony plenty of time to salivate over the sexy lingerie that was in the drawer. He would have a normal expression on his face when she turned around, but she was pretty damn sure that right now his eyes were wide and his mouth was hanging open. A smile tugged at the corners of her mouth as she picked a lacey white set.

She was right. By the time she turned around, he was looking cool and collected once again. She quickly pulled on her clothes and applied some light make up, though she had long ago stopped trying to cover the scar on her forehead. It was a mark of her survival, a badge of honor, and she wasn't going to be ashamed of it.

"Tell me why we have to give statements when the police were right there?" Tony asked. Of course, he knew exactly why they had to give statements, but giving one had interrupted his um…personal time with Pepper, and that did not make him a very happy camper.

"Well, for one, we couldn't see what was going on inside the warehouse, and two…there was a crime. We have to establish that my…shooting Williams was in self defense," she answered, her voice quiet as she mentioned Williams' shooting. Since then, she had been a bit more reserved when it came up.

Somehow, despite the fact that she hadn't handled a gun before, her bullet managed to puncture a major artery in Williams' leg. He had bled out on the pavement before help arrived, and she had stood over him the whole time, not moving, just watching him bleed. He had gasped and choked towards the end, and it was only then that she averted her eyes and went to attend Tony, who was slowly regaining use of his limbs.

She had tried to comfort herself by saying that he had been dealing under the table, that he had tried to kill her, and that he had tried to kill Tony. None of her logic seemed to be working. Maybe some of it had to do with the fact that she was raised Catholic and definitely had the Catholic guilt, but no matter how she tried, she was still upset that she had allowed a man to die when she could have saved him.

"Feeling guilty?" Tony put his hands on her shoulders, gently massaging them. She nodded.

"Yeah. It…I know in my head that he had killed plenty of people, and that he was the reason I was kidnapped, but…I feel like I should have tried to save him at least."

"Pepper," he said as he turned her to face him. "You hit the femoral artery. There's nothing that you could have done."

"I could have tried."

"So that he could take another shot at you? If you had tried to save him, he would have tried to kill you again…and if he had…Pepper, if he hadn't…I didn't go to that warehouse to catch him."

"I know," she answered quietly, resting her forehead against his.

"You don't care?"

"I care, but…it's different…somehow."

"It's different because you are far too quick to be harsh on yourself and not on me, and you know it," he said, placing a gentle kiss on the tip of her nose. "Williams murdered eight police officers in cold blood. If you hadn't done what you did, he would have killed us all."

"I know…I just think it's funny that of all the people to shoot him, it ended up being me…Tony, why me? Why could I move when you couldn't? It doesn't seem right."

"Do you remember waking up during your surgery?" She nodded silently. "I did some research after that. Did you know that it takes fifteen percent more anesthetic to be effective on red headed women?"

"Can't say that I knew that."

"Well, I'm thinking that the same principle applies. However that contraption works, it takes more to work for longer periods of time on red heads."

"Is there actually research to back that up?" she asked, skeptical.

"I can have Jarvis pull it up right now."

"That's okay. We need to leave or we're going to be late." He took her hand and they walked out to where Happy was patiently waiting with the car. Upon seeing them hand in hand, he almost smiled. It was a close one. The drive to the police station was shorter than it should have been, or maybe it just felt that way because they could have comfortable conversation for the first time in months, knowing that they didn't have to worry about someone kidnapping them.

Detective O'Shea was waiting for them in his office. Tony and Pepper took a seat in two chairs opposite his desk, and they went through the painless but boring process of answering all his questions. Mostly, they verified what everyone had seen, and that Pepper's shooting of Craig Williams had been in self defense. Naturally, the whole thing was being investigated, but it was obvious that Pepper wasn't going to face any consequences. Even if she were going to, Tony would have just bribed the jury.

As they stood to leave the office, Detective O'Shea grabbed Pepper's arm. "I know you're feeling guilty about Williams' death and your part in it. You should know that the DA said if the case had gone to trial, he would have gotten the death penalty. I don't know if that makes you feel any better, but…"

Pepper nodded. It did help. At least this way she could say she was doing a favor for society and the taxpayers of America. "It does. Thank you," she answered quietly. With a nod of thanks, Tony took her hand and they left the office.

As usual, a crowd of paparazzi were mobbed outside the station. Happy had the car waiting for them. They pushed through the crowd, laughing at the ridiculous questions they were being bombarded with. As Tony helped her into the car, she was laughing hysterically.

"What?" he asked, confused.

"No matter what happens, they always want to know if I'm having a love child. It's funny. If I ever got pregnant, I'm sure they would want to know if I gave birth to an alien."

Tony was quiet for a minute, a reaction that Pepper had not been expecting. Her expression asked the question.

"You said, 'if I ever got pregnant.' As in…you're considering it?"

"It—I hadn't really thought that—I'd always thought of adopting if I couldn't—Children are…I've always wanted children," she answered nervously. All her fears were pushed aside when a huge, genuine smile spread across his face.

"Even if they had some crazy Stark genetics?" Her smile was just as beautiful and joyous as his.

"Especially if they had some crazy Stark genetics." She wrapped her arms around him, pulled him close and kissed him soundly. He started to push her back into the seat, but she stopped him with a hand on his chest. "Not here," she whispered. He groaned in frustration and pulled away. She rested her head on his shoulder and they rode peacefully until they arrived back at the mansion to find several large trucks in the driveway.

"Happy, what's going on?" Tony asked, concerned. The car came to a screeching halt in front of the mansion and Tony climbed out to confront the men standing around the trucks.

"Tony," Pepper called. He ignored her, and continued heading towards the men. "Tony! It's fine, Tony!"

"You know what's going on?" he asked quizzically, turning to face her.

"Well, I thought that maybe I would take the liberty of having some of my stuff moved in," she answered, biting her lip.

"Some of your stuff? That's your whole apartment—Oh…"

"I didn't think you'd mind. I mean, some of it will have to go into storage, but I'm sure we have plenty of room for it. I think I'm going to have to have my own closet, though."

"I think that can be arranged." Ignoring the pain in his ribs, Tony picked her up and kissed her, not caring about the moving crew cheering and making catcalls. They didn't break the kiss as he carried her into house. He set her down on his bed and lie down beside her, pulling her close against him.

"Now…about those children...I'm thinking we should get started on that," he whispered, unbuttoning her blouse.

"I think that can be arranged…"

* * *

**Author's Note: **So, there it is. I hope you enjoyed. Please help to make my day and review!!!


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